The Life of Dryden

By Samuel Johnson

The text comes from Lives of the English Poets,
ed. G. B. Hill, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905). An abridged version, just over one-fifth
of the text, is also available.

[1]Of the
great poet whose life I am about to delineate, the curiosity
which his reputation must excite will require a display more
ample than can now be given. His contemporaries, however they
reverenced his genius, left his life unwritten; and nothing
therefore can be known beyond what casual mention and uncertain
tradition have supplied.

[2]John
Dryden was born August 9, 1631, at Aldwincle near Oundle,
the son of Erasmus Dryden of Tichmersh, who was the third son of
Sir Erasmus Dryden, Baronet, of Canons Ashby. All these places
are in Northamptonshire, but the original stock of the family was
in the county of Huntingdon.

[3] He is reported by his last
biographer, Derrick, to have inherited from his father an estate
of two hundred a year, and to have been bred, as was said, an
Anabaptist. For either of these particulars no authority is
given. Such a fortune ought to have secured him from that poverty
which seems always to have oppressed him; or if he had wasted it,
to have made him ashamed of publishing his necessities. But
though he had many enemies, who undoubtedly examined his life
with a scrutiny sufficiently malicious, I do not remember that he
is ever charged with waste of his patrimony. He was indeed
sometimes reproached for his first religion. I am therefore
inclined to believe that Derrick's intelligence was partly true,
and partly erroneous.

[4] From Westminster School, where he
was instructed as one of the king's scholars by Dr. Busby, whom
he long after continued to reverence, he was in 1650 elected to
one of the Westminster scholarships at Cambridge.

[5] Of his school performances has
appeared only a poem on the death of Lord Hastings, composed with
great ambition of such conceits as, notwithstanding the
reformation begun by Waller and Denham, the example of Cowley
still kept in reputation. Lord Hastings died of the small-pox,
and his poet has made of the pustules, first rosebuds, and then
gems; at last exalts them into stars, and says,

[6] At the university he does not
appear to have been eager of poetical distinction, or to have
lavished his early wit either on fictitious subjects or publick
occasions. He probably considered that he who purposed to be an
author ought first to be a student. He obtained, whatever was the
reason, no fellowship in the College. Why he was excluded cannot
now be known, and it is vain to guess; had he thought himself
injured, he knew how to complain. In the Life of
Plutarch he mentions his education in the College with
gratitude; but in a prologue at Oxford, he has these lines:

'Oxford to him a dearer name shall be
Than his own mother-university;
Thebes did his rude [green] unknowing youth engage;
He chooses Athens in his riper age.'

[7] It was not till the death of
Cromwell, in 1658, that he became a publick candidate for fame,
by publishing Heroic Stanzas on the late Lord
Protector, which, compared with the verses of Sprat and
Waller on the same occasion, were sufficient to raise great
expectations of the rising poet.

[8] When the king was restored
Dryden, like the other panegyrists of usurpation, changed his
opinion, or his profession, and published Astrea Redux, a
poem on the happy restoration and return of his most sacred
Majesty King Charles the Second.

[9] The reproach of inconstancy was,
on this occasion, shared with such numbers that it produced
neither hatred nor disgrace; if he changed, he changed with the
nation. It was, however, not totally forgotten when his
reputation raised him enemies.

[10] The same year he praised the new
king in a second poem on his restoration. In the
Astrea was the line,

'An horrid stillness first invades the
ear,
And in that silence we a [the] tempest fear,'

for which he was persecuted with perpetual ridicule, perhaps
with more than was deserved. Silence is indeed mere
privation; and, so considered, cannot invade; but
privation likewise certainly is darkness, and probably
cold, yet poetry has never been refused the right of
ascribing effects or agency to them as to positive powers. No man
scruples to say that darkness hinders him from his work,
or that cold has killed the plants. Death is also
privation, yet who has made any difficulty of assigning to Death
a dart and the power of striking?

[11] In settling the order of his
works there is some difficulty, for, even when they are important
enough to be formally offered to a patron, he does not commonly
date his dedication; the time of writing and publishing is not
always the same; nor can the first editions be easily found, if
even from them could be obtained the necessary information.

[12] The time at which his first play
was exhibited is not certainly known, because it was not printed
till it was some years afterwards altered and revived, but since
the plays are said to be printed in the order in which they were
written, from the dates of some those of others may be inferred;
and thus it may be collected that in 1663, in the thirty-second
year of his life, he commenced a writer for the stage, compelled
undoubtedly by necessity, for he appears never to have loved that
exercise of his genius, or to have much pleased himself with his
own dramas.

[13] Of the stage, when he had once
invaded it, he kept possession for many years; not indeed without
the competition of rivals, who sometimes prevailed, or the
censure of criticks, which was often poignant and often just; but
with such a degree of reputation as made him at least secure of
being heard, whatever might be the final determination of the
publick.

[14] His first piece was a comedy
called The Wild Gallant. He began with no happy
auguries; for his performance was so much disapproved that he was
compelled to recall it, and change it from its imperfect state to
the form in which it now appears, and which is yet sufficiently
defective to vindicate the criticks.

[15] I wish that there were no
necessity of following the progress of his theatrical fame, or
tracing the meanders of his mind through the whole series of his
dramatick performances; it will be fit however to enumerate them,
and to take especial notice of those that are distinguished by
any peculiarity intrinsick or concomitant; for the composition
and fate of eight and twenty dramas include too much of a
poetical life to be omitted.

[16] In 1664 he published The
Rival Ladies, which he dedicated to the Earl of Orrery, a
man of high reputation both as a writer and a statesman. In this
play he made his essay of dramatick rhyme, which he defends in
his dedication, with sufficient certainty of a favourable
hearing; for Orrery was himself a writer of rhyming
tragedies.

[17] He then joined with Sir Robert
Howard in The Indian Queen, a tragedy in rhyme. The
parts which either of them wrote are not distinguished.

[18]The Indian Emperor
was published in 1667. It is a tragedy in rhyme, intended for a
sequel to Howard's Indian Queen. Of this connection
notice was given to the audience by printed bills, distributed at
the door; an expedient supposed to be ridiculed in
The Rehearsal, when Bayes tells how many reams he
has printed, to instil into the audience some conception of his
plot.

[19] In this play is the description
of Night, which Rymer has made famous by preferring it to those
of all other poets.

[20] The practice of making tragedies
in rhyme was introduced soon after the Restoration, as it seems,
by the earl of Orrery, in compliance with the opinion of Charles
the Second, who had formed his taste by the French theatre; and
Dryden, who wrote, and made no difficulty of declaring that he
wrote, only to please, and who perhaps knew that by his dexterity
of versification he was more likely to excel others in rhyme than
without it, very rapidly adopted his master's preference. He
therefore made rhyming tragedies till, by the prevalence of
manifest propriety, he seems to have grown ashamed of making them
any longer.

[21] To this play is prefixed a very
vehement defence of dramatick rhyme, in confutation of the
preface to The Duke of Lerma, in which Sir Robert
Howard had censured it.

[22] In 1667 he published Annus
Mirabilis, The Year of Wonders, which may be esteemed one
of his most elaborate works.

[23] It is addressed to Sir Robert
Howard by a letter, which is not properly a dedication; and,
writing to a poet, he has interspersed many critical
observations, of which some are common, and some perhaps ventured
without much consideration. He began even now to exercise the
domination of conscious genius, by recommending his own
performance: 'I am [well] satisfied that as the Prince and
General [Rupert and Monk] are incomparably the best subjects
[subject] I ever had [excepting only the royal family], so what
[also that this] I have written on them is much better than what
I have performed on any other [. . . ], as I have
endeavoured to adorn my poem with noble thoughts, so much more to
express those thoughts with elocution.'

[24] It is written in quatrains or
heroick stanzas of four lines; a measure which he had learned
from the Gondibert of Davenant, and which he then
thought the most majestick that the English language affords. Of
this stanza he mentions the encumbrances, increased as they were
by the exactness which the age required. It was throughout his
life very much his custom to recommend his works by
representation of the difficulties that he had encountered,
without appearing to have sufficiently considered that where
there is no difficulty there is no praise.

[25] There seems to be in the conduct
of Sir Robert Howard and Dryden towards each other something that
is not now easily to be explained. Dryden, in his dedication to
the earl of Orrery, had defended dramatick rhyme; and Howard, in
the preface to a collection of plays, had censured his opinion.
Dryden vindicated himself in his Dialogue on Dramatick
Poetry; Howard, in his Preface to The Duke of
Lerma, animadverted on the Vindication; and Dryden, in a
Preface to The Indian Emperor, replied to the
Animadversions with great asperity, and almost with contumely.
The dedication to this play is dated the year in which the
Annus Mirabilis was published. Here appears a
strange inconsistency; but Langbaine affords some help, by
relating that the answer to Howard was not published in the first
edition of the play, but was added when it was afterwards
reprinted; and as The Duke of Lerma did not appear
till 1668, the same year in which the Dialogue was
published, there was time enough for enmity to grow up between
authors who, writing both for the theatre, were naturally
rivals.

[26] He was now so much distinguished
that in 1668 he succeeded Sir William Davenant as poet-laureat.
The salary of the laureat had been raised in favour of Jonson, by
Charles the First, from an hundred marks to one hundred pounds a
year and a tierce of wine; a revenue in those days not inadequate
to the conveniencies of life.

[27] The same year he published his
Essay on [of] Dramatick Poetry, an elegant and
instructive dialogue, in which we are told by Prior that the
principal character is meant to represent the duke of Dorset.
This work seems to have given Addison a model for his
Dialogues upon Medals.

[28]Secret Love, or the Maiden
Queen, is a tragi-comedy. In the preface he discusses a
curious question, whether a poet can judge well of his own
productions: and determines very justly that of the plan and
disposition, and all that can be reduced to principles of
science, the author may depend upon his own opinion; but that in
those parts where fancy predominates self-love may easily
deceive. He might have observed, that what is good only because
it pleases cannot be pronounced good till it has been found to
please.

[29]Sir Martin Marall
is a comedy, published without preface or dedication, and at
first without the name of the author. Langbaine charges it, like
most of the rest, with plagiarism, and observes that the song is
translated from Voiture, allowing however that both the sense and
measure are exactly observed.

[30]The Tempest is an
alteration of Shakespeare's play, made by Dryden in conjunction
with Davenant, 'whom,' says he, 'I found of so quick a fancy that
nothing was proposed to him in [on] which he could not suddenly
produce a thought extremely pleasant and surprising; and those
first thoughts of his, contrary to the Latin proverb, were not
always the least happy; and as his fancy was quick, so likewise
were the products of it remote and new. He borrowed not of any
other, and his imaginations were such as could not easily enter
into any other man.'

[31] The effect produced by the
conjunction of these two powerful minds was that to Shakespeare's
monster Caliban is added a sister-monster Sicorax; and a woman,
who, in the original play, had never seen a man, is in this
brought acquainted with a man that had never seen a woman.

[32] About this time, in 1673, Dryden
seems to have had his quiet much disturbed by the success of
The Empress of Morocco, a tragedy written in rhyme
by Elkanah Settle; which was so much applauded as to make him
think his supremacy of reputation in some danger. Settle had not
only been prosperous on the stage, but, in the confidence of
success, had published his play, with sculptures and a preface of
defiance. Here was one offence added to another; and, for the
last blast of inflammation, it was acted at Whitehall by the
court-ladies.

[33] Dryden could not now repress
these emotions, which he called indignation, and others jealousy;
but wrote upon the play and the dedication such criticism as
malignant impatience could pour out in haste.

[34] Of Settle he gives this
character.

'He's an animal of a most deplored understanding, without
[reading and] conversation. His being is in a twilight of sense
and some glimmering of thought, which he can never fashion into
wit or English. His style is boisterous and rough-hewn, his rhyme
incorrigibly lewd, and his numbers perpetually harsh and
ill-sounding. The little talent which he has is fancy. He
sometimes labours with a thought, but, with the pudder he makes
to bring it into the world, 'tis commonly still-born; so that,
for want of learning and elocution, he will never be able to
express any thing either naturally or justly!'

[35] This is not very decent; yet
this is one of the pages in which criticism prevails most over
brutal fury. He proceeds:

'He has a heavy hand at fools, and a great felicity in writing
nonsense for them. Fools they will be in spite of him. His King,
his two Empresses, his villain, and his sub-villain, nay his
hero, have all a certain natural cast of the father.
. . . Their folly was born and bred in them, and
something of the Elkanah will be visible.'

[36] This is Dryden's general
declamation; I will not withhold from the reader a particular
remark. Having gone through the first act, he says:

'To conclude this act with the most rumbling piece of nonsense
spoken yet,

"To flattering lightning our feign'd smiles conform,
Which back'd with thunder do but gild a storm."

Conform a smile to lightning, make a smile
imitate lightning, and flattering lightning;
lightning sure is a threatening thing. And this lightning must
gild a storm. Now if I must conform my smiles to
lightning, then my smiles must gild a storm too; to gild
with smiles is a new invention of gilding. And gild a
storm by being backed with thunder. Thunder is part of
the storm; so one part of the storm must help to gild
another part, and help by backing; as if a man would
gild a thing the better for being backed, or having a load upon
his back. So that here is gilding by conforming,
smiling, lightning, backing, and thundering. The
whole is as if I should say thus, I will make my counterfeit
smiles look like a flattering stone-horse, which, being backed
with a trooper, does but gild the battle. I am mistaken if
nonsense is not here pretty thick sown. Sure the poet writ these
two lines aboard some smack in a storm, and, being sea-sick,
spewed up a good lump of clotted nonsense at once.'

[37] Here is perhaps a sufficient
specimen; but as the pamphlet, though Dryden's, has never been
thought worthy of republication and is not easily to be found, it
may gratify curiosity to quote it more largely.

'"Whene'er she bleeds,
He no severer a damnation needs,
That dares pronounce the sentence of her death,
Than the infection that attends that breath."

That attends that breath. — The poet is at
breath again; breath can never 'scape him; and
here he brings in a breath that must be
infectious with pronouncing a sentence; and
this sentence is not to be pronounced till the condemned party
bleeds, that is, she must be executed first, and
sentenced after; and the pronouncing of this
sentence will be infectious, that is, others will catch
the disease of that sentence, and this infecting of others will
torment a man's self. The whole is thus: when she bleeds,
thou needest no greater hell or torment to thyself than infecting
of others by pronouncing a sentence upon her. What
hodge-podge does he make here! Never was Dutch grout such
clogging, thick, indigestible stuff. But this is but a taste to
stay the stomach; we share a more plentiful mess presently.

[38] 'Now to dish up the poet's broth
that I promised:

"For when we're dead and our freed souls enlarg'd,
Of nature's grosser burden we're discharg'd,
Then gently, as a happy lover's sigh,
Like wandering meteors through the air we'll fly,
And in our airy walk, as subtle guests,
We'll steal into our cruel fathers' breasts,
There read their souls, and track each passion's sphere:
See how Revenge moves there, Ambition here.
And in their orbs view the dark characters
Of sieges, ruins, murders, blood and wars.
We'll blot out all those hideous draughts, and write
Pure and white forms; then with a radiant light
Their breasts encircle, till their passions be
Gentle as nature in its infancy:
Till soften'd by our charms their furies cease,
And their revenge resolves into a peace.
Thus by our death their quarrel ends,
Whom living we made foes, dead we'll make friends."

If this be not a very liberal mess, I will refer myself to the
stomach of any moderate guest. And a rare mess it is, far
excelling any Westminster white-broth. It is a kind of giblet
porridge, made of the giblets of a couple of young geese, stodged
full of meteors, orbs, spheres, track, hideous draughts, dark
characters, white forms, and radiant lights,
designed not only to please appetite and indulge luxury, but it
is also physical, being an approved medicine to purge choler, for
it is propounded by Morena as a receipt to cure their fathers of
their choleric humours: and were it written in characters as
barbarous as the words, might very well pass for a doctor's bill.
To conclude, it is porridge, 'tis a receipt, 'tis a pig with a
pudding in the belly, 'tis I know not what; for, certainly, never
any one that pretended to write sense had the impudence before to
put such stuff as this into the mouths of those that were to
speak it before an audience, whom he did not take to be all
fools; and after that to print it too, and expose it to the
examination of the world. But let us see what we can make of this
stuff:

"For when we're dead and our freed souls
enlarg'd" —

Here he tells us what it is to be dead; it is to have
our freed souls set free. Now if to have a soul set free
is to be dead, then to have a freed soul set free is to
have a dead man die.

"Then gently, as a happy lover's sigh" —

They two like one sigh, and that one sigh
like two wandering meteors,

"— shall fly through the air" —

That is, they shall mount above like falling stars, or else
they shall skip like two Jacks with lanthorns, or Will with a
wisp, and Madge with a candle.

[39]'And in their airy walk
steal into their cruel fathers' breasts, like subtle guests.
So that their fathers' breasts must be in an airy
walk, an airy walk of a flier. And there they
will read their souls, and track the spheres of their
passions. That is, these walking fliers, Jack with a
lanthorn, &c. will put on his spectacles, and fall a
reading souls, and put on his pumps and fall a
tracking of spheres; so that he will read and run, walk
and fly at the same time! Oh! Nimble Jack. Then he will see,
how revenge here, how ambition there — The birds will
hop about. And then view the dark characters of sieges,
ruins, murders, blood, and wars, in their orbs: Track the
characters to their forms! Oh! rare sport for Jack. Never
was place so full of game as these breasts! You cannot stir but
flush a sphere, start a character, or unkennel an orb!'

[40] Settle's is said to have been
the first play embellished with sculptures; those ornaments seem
to have given poor Dryden great disturbance. He tries however to
ease his pain by venting his malice in a parody.

[41] 'The poet has not only been so
impudent to expose all this stuff, but so arrogant to defend it
with an epistle; like a saucy booth-keeper that, when he had put
a cheat upon the people, would wrangle and fight with any that
would not like it or would offer to discover it: for which
arrogance our poet receives this correction; and to jerk him a
little the sharper, I will not transpose [trans-prose] his verse,
but by the help of his own words trans-nonsense sense, that, by
my stuff, people may judge the better what his is:

'Great Boy, thy tragedy and sculptures done
From press, and plates in fleets do homeward come:
And in ridiculous and humble pride,
Their course in ballad-singers' baskets guide,
Whose greasy twigs do all new beauties take,
From the gay shews thy dainty sculptures make.
Thy lines a mess of rhyming nonsense yield,
A senseless tale, with flattering [fluttering] fustian fill'd.
No grain of sense does in one line appear,
Thy words big bulks of boisterous bombast bear.
With noise they move, and from players' mouths rebound,
When their tongues dance to thy words' empty sound.
By thee inspir'd the [thy] rumbling verses roll,
As if that rhyme and bombast lent a soul:
And with that soul they seem taught duty too,
To huffing words does humble nonsense bow,
As if it would thy worthless worth enhance,
To th' lowest rank of fops thy praise advance; To whom, by
instinct, all thy stuff is dear; Their loud claps echo to the
theatre. From breaths of fools thy commendation spreads,
Fame sings thy praise with mouths of loggerheads. With noise
and laughing each thy fustian greets, 'Tis clapt by quires of
empty-headed cits, Who have their tribute sent, and homage
given, As men in whispers send loud noise to heaven.

'Thus I have daubed him with his own puddle: and now we are
come from aboard his dancing, masking, rebounding, breathing
fleet; and as if we had landed at Gotham, we meet nothing but
fools and nonsense.'

[42] Such was the criticism to which
the genius of Dryden could be reduced, between rage and terrour;
rage with little provocation and terrour with little danger. To
see the highest minds thus levelled with the meanest may produce
some solace to the consciousness of weakness, and some
mortification to the pride of wisdom. But let it be remembered,
that minds are not levelled in their powers but when they are
first levelled in their desires. Dryden and Settle had both
placed their happiness in the claps of multitudes.

[43]The Mock
Astrologer, a comedy, is dedicated to the illustrious duke
of Newcastle, whom he courts by adding to his praises those of
his lady, not only as a lover but a partner of his studies. It is
unpleasing to think how many names once celebrated are since
forgotten. Of Newcastle's works nothing is now known but his
treatise on horsemanship.

[44] The Preface seems very
elaborately written, and contains many just remarks on the
Fathers of the English drama. Shakespeare's plots, he says, are
in the hundred novels of Cinthio; those of Beaumont and Fletcher
in Spanish stories; Jonson only made them for himself. His
criticisms upon tragedy, comedy, and farce are judicious and
profound. He endeavours to defend the immorality of some of his
comedies by the example of former writers; which is only to say,
that he was not the first nor perhaps the greatest offender.
Against those that accused him of plagiarism he alleges a
favourable expression of the king: 'He only desired that they,
who accuse me of thefts, would steal him plays like mine'; and
then relates how much labour he spends in fitting for the English
stage what he borrows from others.

[45]Tyrannick Love, or the
Virgin Martyr, was another tragedy in rhyme, conspicuous
for many passages of strength and elegance and many of empty
noise and ridiculous turbulence. The rants of Maximin have been
always the sport of criticism, and were at length, if his own
confession may be trusted, the shame of the writer.

[46] Of this play he takes care to
let the reader know that it was contrived and written in seven
weeks. Want of time was often his excuse, or perhaps shortness of
time was his private boast in the form of an apology.

[47] It was written before The
Conquest of Granada, but published after it. The design is
to recommend piety: 'I considered that pleasure was not the only
end of poesy, and that even the instructions of morality were not
so wholly the business of a poet, as that [the] precepts and
examples of piety were to be omitted; for to leave that
employment altogether to the clergy were to forget that religion
was first taught in verse, which the laziness or dulness of
succeeding priesthood turned afterwards into prose.' Thus
foolishly could Dryden write, rather than not shew his malice to
the parsons.

[48] The two parts of The
Conquest of Granada are written with a seeming
determination to glut the publick w??? wonders; to exhibit in its
highest elevation a theatrical meteor of incredible love and
impossible valour, and to leave no room for a wilder flight to
the extravagance of posterity. All the rays of romantick heat,
whether amorous or warlike, glow in Almanzor by a kind of
concentration. He is above all laws; he is exempt from all
restraints; he ranges the world at will, and governs wherever he
appears. He fights without enquiring the cause, and loves in
spite of the obligations of justice, of rejection by his
mistress, and of prohibition from the dead. Yet the scenes are,
for the most part, delightful; they exhibit a kind of illustrious
depravity and majestick madness: such as, if it is sometimes
despised, is often reverenced, and in which the ridiculous is
mingled with the astonishing.

[49] In the Epilogue to the second
part of The Conquest of Granada, Dryden indulges his
favourite pleasure of discrediting his predecessors; and this
Epilogue he has defended by a long postscript. He had promised a
second dialogue, in which he should more fully treat of the
virtues and faults of the English poets, who have written in the
dramatick, epick, or lyrick way. This promise was never formally
performed; but, with respect to the dramatick writers, he has
given us in his prefaces and in this postscript something
equivalent: but his purpose being to exalt himself by the
comparison, he shows faults distinctly, and only praises
excellence in general terms.

[50] A play thus written, in
professed defiance of probability, naturally drew down upon
itself the vultures of the theatre. One of the criticks that
attacked it was Martin Clifford, to whom Sprat addressed the
Life of Cowley, with such veneration of his critical
powers as might naturally excite great expectations of
instruction from his remarks. But let honest credulity beware of
receiving characters from contemporary writers. Clifford's
remarks, by the favour of Dr. Percy, were at last obtained; and,
that no man may ever want them more, I will extract enough to
satisfy all reasonable desire.

[51] In the first Letter his
observation is only general:

'You do live,' says he, 'in as much ignorance and darkness as
you did in the womb: your writings are like a jack-of-all-trades
shop; they have a variety, but nothing of value; and if thou art
not the dullest plant-animal that ever the earth produced, all
that I have conversed with are strangely mistaken in thee.'

[52] In the second, he tells him that
Almanzor is not more copied from Achilles than from Ancient
Pistol.

'But I am,' says he, 'strangely mistaken if I have not seen
this very Almanzor of yours in some disguise about this town and
passing under another name. Pr'ythee tell me true, was not this
Huffcap once the Indian Emperor, and at another time did he not
call himself Maximin? Was not Lyndaraxa once called Almeria? I
mean under Montezuma the Indian Emperor. I protest and vow they
are either the same, or so alike that I cannot, for my heart,
distinguish one from the other. You are therefore a strange
unconscionable thief; thou art not content to steal from others,
but dost rob thy poor wretched self too.'

[53] Now was Settle's time to take
his revenge. He wrote a vindication of his own lines; and, if he
is forced to yield any thing, makes reprisals upon his enemy. To
say that his answer is equal to the censure is no high
commendation. To expose Dryden's method of analysing his
expressions, he tries the same experiment upon the description of
the ships in The Indian Emperor, of which however he
does not deny the excellence; but intends to shew that by studied
misconstruction every thing may be equally represented as
ridiculous. After so much of Dryden's elegant animadversions,
justice requires that something of Settle's should be exhibited.
The following observations are therefore extracted from a quarto
pamphlet of ninety five pages:

[54] '"Fate after him below with pain
did move, And victory could scarce keep pace above."

These two lines, if he can show me any sense or thought in, or
any thing but bombast and noise, he shall make me believe every
word in his observations on Morocco sense.

[55] 'In The Empress of
Morocco were these lines:

"I'll travel then to some remoter sphere, Till I find out
new worlds, and crown you there."

On which Dryden made this remark:

???
"I believe our learned author takes a sphere for a country: the
sphere of Morocco, as if Morocco were the globe of earth and
water; but a globe is no sphere neither, by his leave," &c.
So sphere must not be sense, unless it relate to a
circular motion about a globe, in which sense the astronomers use
it. I would desire him to expound these lines in
Granada:

"I'll to the turrets of the palace go, And add new fire to
those that fight below. Thence, hero-like [Hero-like], with
torches by my side (Far be the omen tho'), my Love I'll
[will] guide. No, like his better fortune I'll appear,
With open arms, loose vail and flowing hair, Just flying
forward from my rowling sphere."

I wonder, if he be so strict, how he dares make so bold with
sphere himself, and be so critical in other men's
writings. Fortune is fancied standing on a globe, not on a
sphere, as he told us in the first Act.

[56] 'Because "Elkanah's similes are
the most unlike things to what they are compared in the world,"
I'll venture to start a simile in his Annus
Mirabilis: he gives this poetical description of the ship
called the London:

"The goodly London in her gallant trim, The
Phenix-daughter of the vanquisht [vanished] old, Like a rich
bride does to the ocean swim, And on her shadow rides in
floating gold.

"Her flag aloft spread ruffling in [to] the wind, And
sanguine streamers seem'd [seem] the flood to fire: The
weaver, charm'd with what his loom design'd, Goes on to sea,
and knows not to retire.

"With roomy decks, her guns of mighty strength, Whose
low-laid mouths each mounting billow laves, Deep in her
draught, and warlike in her length, She seems a sea-wasp
flying on the waves."

What a wonderful pother is here, to make all these poetical
beautifications of a ship! that is, a phenix in the
first stanza, and but a wasp in the last; nay, to make
his humble comparison of a wasp more ridiculous, he does
not say it flies [flew] upon the waves as nimbly as a wasp, or
the like, but it seemed a wasp. But our author at the
writing of this was not in his altitudes, to compare ships to
floating palaces; a comparison to the purpose was a perfection he
did not arrive to till his Indian Emperor's days.
But perhaps his similitude has more in it than we imagine; this
ship had a great many guns in her, and they, put all together,
made the sting in the wasp's tail: for this is all the reason I
can guess why it seemed a wasp. But, because we will
allow him all we can to help out, let it be a phenix
sea-wasp, and the rarity of such an animal may do much
towards the heightening the fancy.

[57] 'It had been much more to his
purpose, if he had designed to render the senseless [Authour's]
play little, to have searched for some such pedantry as this:

"Two ifs scarce make one possibility."

"If justice will take all and nothing give, Justice,
methinks, is not distributive."

"To die or kill you, is the alternative, Rather than take
your life, I will not live."

Observe, how prettily our author chops logick in heroick
verse. Three such fustian canting words as distributive,
alternative, and two ifs, no man but himself would
have come within the noise of. But he's a man of general
learning, and all comes into his play.

[58] ''Twould have done well too if
he could have met with a rant or two worth the observation; such
as

But surely the Sun, whether he flies a lover's or not a
lover's pace, leaves weeks and months, nay years too, behind him
in his race. ??? 'Poor Robin, or any other of the
Philomathematicks, would have given him satisfaction in the
point.

[59] "If I could [would] kill thee
now, thy fate's so low, That I must stoop ere I can give the
blow. But mine is fixt so far above thy crown, That all
thy men, Piled on thy back, can never pull it down."

'Now where that is, Almanzor's fate is fixt, I cannot guess;
but wherever it is, I believe Almanzor, and think that all
Abdalla's subjects, piled upon one another, might not pull down
his fate so well as without piling: besides, I think Abdalla so
wise a man, that if Almanzor had told him piling his men upon his
back might do the feat, he would scarce bear such a weight for
the pleasure of the exploit; but it is a huff, and let Abdalla do
it if he dare.

[60] "The people like a headlong
torrent go, And every dam they break or overflow. But,
unoppos'd, they either lose their force, Or wind in volumes
to their former course."

A very pretty allusion, contrary to all sense or reason.
Torrents, I take it, let them wind never so much, can never
return to their former course, unless he can suppose that
fountains can go upwards, which is impossible; nay more, in the
foregoing page he tells us so too. A trick of a very unfaithful
memory,

"But can no more than fountains upward flow."

Which of a torrent, which signifies a rapid stream,
is much more impossible. Besides, if he goes to quibble, and say
that it is possible by art water may be made return and the same
water run twice in one and the same channel, then he quite
confutes what he says; for it is by being opposed that it runs
into its former course: for all engines that make water so
return, do it by compulsion and opposition. Or, if he means a
headlong torrent for a tide, which would be ridiculous, yet they
do not wind in volumes, but come fore-right back (if their
upright lies straight to their former course), and that by
opposition of the sea-water, that drives them back again.

[61] 'And for fancy, when he lights
of any thing like it, 'tis a wonder if it be not borrowed. As
here, for example of, I find this fanciful thought in his
Ann. Mirab.

"Old father Thames raised up his reverend head, But feared
the fate of Simoeis would return; Deep in his ooze he sought
his sedgy bed, And shrunk his waters back into his urn."

"And when the Spaniards their assault begin, At once beat
those without and these within."

This Almanzor speaks of himself; and sure for one man to
conquer an army within the city and another without the city at
once, is something difficult; but this flight is pardonable to
some we meet with in Granada. Osmin [Ozmyn],
speaking of Almanzor:

"Who, like a tempest that outrides the wind, Made a just
battle, ere the bodies join'd."

Pray what does this honourable person mean by a "tempest
that outrides the wind"! A tempest that outrides itself. To
suppose a tempest without wind, is as bad as supposing a man to
walk without feet; for if he supposes the tempest to be something
distinct from the wind, yet as being the effect of wind only, to
come before the cause is a little preposterous; so that, if he
takes it one way, or if he takes it the other, those two
ifs will scarce make one possibility.' Enough
of Settle.

[62]Marriage Alamode is
a comedy dedicated to the Earl of Rochester, whom he acknowledges
not only as the defender of his poetry, but the promoter of his
fortune. Langbaine places this play in 1673. The earl of
Rochester therefore was the famous Wilmot, whom yet tradition
always represents as an enemy to Dryden, and who is mentioned by
him with some disrespect in the preface to Juvenal.

[63]The Assignation, or Love
in a Nunnery, a comedy, was driven off the stage, 'against
the opinion,' as the author says, 'of the best judges.' It is
dedicated in a very elegant address to Sir Charles Sedley; in
which he finds an opportunity for his usual complaint of hard
treatment and unreasonable censure.

[64]Amboyna is a tissue
of mingled dialogue in verse and prose, and was perhaps written
in less time than The Virgin Martyr; though the
author thought not fit either ostentatiously or mournfully to
tell how little labour it cost him, or at how short a warning he
produced it. It was a temporary performance, written in the time
of the Dutch war, to inflame the nation against their enemies; to
whom he hopes, as he declares in his Epilogue, to make his poetry
not less destructive than that by which Tyrtaeus of old animated
the Spartans. This play was written in the second Dutch war in
1673.

[65]Troilus and
Cressida is a play altered from Shakespeare, but so
altered that even in Langbaine's opinion, 'the last scene in the
third act is a masterpiece.' It is introduced by a discourse on
the grounds of criticism in tragedy, to which I suspect
that Rymer's book had given occasion.

[66]The Spanish Fryar
is a tragi-comedy, eminent for the happy coincidence and
coalition of the two plots. As it was written against the Papists
it would naturally at that time have friends and enemies; and
partly by the popularity which it obtained at first, and partly
by the real power both of the serious and risible part, it
continued long a favourite of the publick.

[67] It was Dryden's opinion, at
least for some time, and he maintains it in the dedication of
this play, that the drama required an alternation of comick and
tragick scenes, and that it is necessary to mitigate by
alleviations of merriment the pressure of ponderous events and
the fatigue of toilsome passions. 'Whoever,' says he, 'cannot
perform both parts, is but half a writer for the
stage.'

[68]The Duke of Guise,
a tragedy written in conjunction with Lee, as
Oedipus had been before, seems to deserve notice
only for the offence which it gave to the remnant of the
Covenanters, and in general to the enemies of the court, who
attacked him with great violence, and were answered by him;
though at last he seems to withdraw from the conflict, by
transferring the greater part of the blame or merit to his
partner. It happened that a contract had been made between them,
by which they were to join in writing a play; and 'he happened,'
says Dryden, 'to claim the [performance of that] promise just
upon the finishing of a poem, when I would have been glad of a
little respite. — Two thirds of it belonged to him; and to
me only the first scene of the play, the whole fourth act, and
the first half or somewhat more of the fifth.'

[69] This was a play written
professedly for the party of the duke of York, whose succession
was then opposed. A parallel is intended between the Leaguers of
France and the Covenanters of England; and this intention
produced the controversy.

[70]Albion and Albania
[sic] is a musical drama or opera, written, like
The Duke of Guise, against the Republicans. With
what success it was performed I have not found.

[71]The State of Innocence and
Fall of Man is termed by him an opera; it is rather a
tragedy in heroick rhyme, but of which the personages are such as
cannot decently be exhibited on the stage. Some such production
was foreseen by Marvel, who writes thus to Milton:

'Or if a work so infinite be [he] spann'd, Jealous I was
lest [that] some less skilful hand, Such as disquiet always
what is well, And by ill-imitating would excel, Might
hence presume the whole creation's day To change in scenes,
and shew it in a play.'

It is another of his hasty productions; for the heat of his
imagination raised it in a month.

[72] This composition is addressed to
the princess of Modena, then dutchess of York, in a strain of
flattery which disgraces genius, and which it was wonderful that
any man that knew the meaning of his own words could use without
self-detestation. It is an attempt to mingle earth and heaven, by
praising human excellence in the language of religion.

[73] The preface contains an apology
for heroick verse and poetick licence; by which is meant not any
liberty taken in contracting or extending words, but the use of
bold fictions and ambitious figures.

[74] The reason which he gives for
printing what was never acted cannot be overpassed: 'I was
induced to it in my own defence, many hundred copies of it being
dispersed abroad without my knowledge or consent, and every one
gathering new faults, it became at length a libel against me.'
These copies as they gathered faults were apparently manuscript;
and he lived in an age very unlike ours if many hundred copies of
fourteen hundred lines were likely to be transcribed. An author
has a right to print his own works, and needs not seek an apology
in falsehood; but he that could bear to write the dedication felt
no pain in writing the preface.

[75]Aureng Zebe is a
tragedy founded on the actions of a great prince then reigning,
but over nations not likely to employ their criticks upon the
transactions of the English stage. If he had known and disliked
his own character, our trade was not in those times secure from
his resentment. His country is at such a distance that the
manners might be safely falsified and the incidents feigned; for
remoteness of place is remarked by Racine to afford the same
conveniencies to a poet as length of time.

[76] This play is written in rhyme;
and has the appearance of being the most elaborate of all the
dramas. The personages are imperial; but the dialogue is often
domestick, and therefore susceptible of sentiments accommodated
to familiar incidents. The complaint of life is celebrated, and
there are many other passages that may be read with pleasure.

[77] This play is addressed to the
earl of Mulgrave, afterwards duke of Buckingham, himself, if not
a poet, yet a writer of verses, and a critick. In this address
Dryden gave the first hints of his intention to write an epick
poem. He mentions his design in terms so obscure that he seems
afraid lest his plan should be purloined, as, he says, happened
to him when he told it more plainly in his preface to Juvenal.
'The design,' says he, 'you know is great, the story English, and
neither too near the present times, nor too distant from
them.'

[78]All for Love, or the World
well lost, a tragedy founded upon the story of Antony and
Cleopatra, he tells us, 'is the only play which he wrote for
himself'; the rest were 'given to the people.' It is by universal
consent accounted the work in which he has admitted the fewest
improprieties of style or character; but it has one fault equal
to many, though rather moral than critical, that by admitting the
romantick omnipotence of Love, he has recommended as laudable and
worthy of imitation that conduct which through all ages the good
have censured as vicious, and the bad despised as foolish.

[79] Of this play the prologue and
the epilogue, though written upon the common topicks of malicious
and ignorant criticism, and without any particular relation to
the characters or incidents of the drama, are deservedly
celebrated for their elegance and spriteliness.

[80]Limber ham, or the kind
Keeper, is a comedy, which after the third night was
prohibited as too indecent for the stage. What gave offence was
in the printing, as the author says, altered or omitted. Dryden
confesses that its indecency was objected to; but Langbaine, who
yet seldom favours him, imputes its expulsion to resentment,
because it 'so much exposed the keeping part of the town.'

[81]Oedipus is a
tragedy formed by Dryden and Lee in conjunction from the works of
Sophocles, Seneca, and Corneille. Dryden planned the scenes, and
composed the first and third acts.

[82]Don Sebastian is
commonly esteemed either the first or second of his dramatick
performances. It and has many characters and many incidents; and
though it is not without sallies of frantick dignity, and more
noise than meaning, yet as it makes approaches to the
possibilities of real life, and has some sentiments which leave a
strong impression, it continued long to attract attention. Amidst
the distresses of princes and the vicissitudes of empire are
inserted several scenes which the writer intended for comick; but
which, I suppose, that age did not much commend, and this would
not endure. There are, however, passages of excellence
universally acknowledged; the dispute and the reconciliation of
Dorax and Sebastian has always been admired. ??? This play
was first acted in 1690, after Dryden had for some years
discontinued dramatick poetry.

[83]Amphitryon is a
comedy derived from Plautus and Molière. The dedication is dated
Oct. 1690. This play seems to have succeeded at its first
appearance; and was, I think, long considered as a very diverting
entertainment.

[84]Cleomenes is a
tragedy, only remarkable as it occasioned an incident related in
The Guardian, and allusively mentioned by Dryden in
his preface. As he came out from the representation, he was
accosted thus by some airy stripling: 'Had I been left alone with
a young beauty, I would not have spent my time like your
Spartan.' 'That, Sir,' said Dryden, 'perhaps is true; but give me
leave to tell you, that you are no hero.'

[85]King Arthur is
another opera. It was the last work that Dryden performed for
King Charles, who did not live to see it exhibited; and it does
not seem to have been ever brought upon the stage. In the
dedication to the marquis of Halifax there is a very elegant
character of Charles, and a pleasing account of his latter life.
When this was first brought upon the stage, news that the duke of
Monmouth had landed was told in the theatre, upon which the
company departed, and Arthur was exhibited no
more.

[86] His last drama was Love
triumphant, a tragi-comedy. In his dedication to the Earl
of Salisbury he mentions 'the lowness of fortune to which he has
voluntarily reduced himself, and of which he has no reason to be
ashamed.' ??? This play appeared in 1694. It is said to have
been unsuccessful. The catastrophe, proceeding merely from a
change of mind, is confessed by the author to be defective. Thus
he began and ended his dramatick labours with ill success.

[87] From such a number of theatrical
pieces it will be supposed by most readers that he must have
improved his fortune; at least, that such diligence with such
abilities must have set penury at defiance. But in Dryden's time
the drama was very far from that universal approbation which it
has now obtained. The playhouse was abhorred by the Puritans, and
avoided by those who desired the character of seriousness or
decency. A grave lawyer would have debased his dignity, and a
young trader would have impaired his credit, by appearing in
those mansions of dissolute licentiousness. The profits of the
theatre when so many classes of the people were deducted from the
audience were not great, and the poet had for a long time but a
single night. The first that had two nights was Southern, and the
first that had three was Rowe. There were, however, in those days
arts of improving a poet's profit, which Dryden forbore to
practise; and a play therefore seldom produced him more than a
hundred pounds, by the accumulated gain of the third night the
dedication, and the copy.

[88] Almost every piece had a
dedication, written with such elegance and luxuriance of praise
as neither haughtiness nor avarice could be imagined able to
resist. But he seems to have made flattery too cheap. That praise
is worth nothing of which the price is known.

[89] To increase the value of his
copies he often accompanied his work with a preface of criticism,
a kind of learning then almost new in the English language, and
which he, who had considered with great accuracy the principles
of writing, was able to distribute copiously as occasions arose.
By these dissertations the publick judgement must have been much
improved; and Swift, who conversed with Dryden, relates that he
regretted the success of his own instructions, and found his
readers made suddenly too skilful to be easily satisfied.

[90] His prologues had such
reputation that for some time a play was considered as less
likely to be well received if some of his verses did not
introduce it. The price of a prologue was two guineas, till being
asked to write one for Mr. Southern, he demanded three, 'Not,'
said he, 'young man, out of disrespect to you, but the players
have had my goods too cheap.'

[91] Though he declares that in his
own opinion his genius was not dramatick, he had great confidence
in his own fertility; for he is said to have engaged by contract
to furnish four plays a year.

[92] It is certain that in one year,
1678, he published All for Love,
Assignation, two parts of The Conquest of
Granada, Sir Martin Marall, and The
State of Innocence, six complete plays; with a celerity of
performance which, though all Langbaine's charges of plagiarism
should be allowed, shews such facility of composition, such
readiness of language, and such copiousness of sentiment, as
since the time of Lopez de Vega perhaps no other author has
possessed.

[93] He did not enjoy his reputation,
however great, nor his profits, however small, without
molestation. He had criticks to endure, and rivals to oppose. The
two most distinguished wits of the nobility, the duke of
Buckingham and earl of Rochester, declared themselves his
enemies.

[94] Buckingham characterised him in
1671 by the name of Bayes in The Rehearsal, a farce
which he is said to have written with the assistance of Butler
the author of Hudibras, Martin Clifford of the
Charterhouse, and Dr. Sprat, the friend of Cowley, then his
chaplain. Dryden and his friends laughed at the length of time,
and the number of hands employed upon this performance; in which,
though by some artifice of action it yet keeps possession of the
stage, it is not possible now to find any thing that might not
have been written without so long delay, or a confederacy so
numerous.

[95] To adjust the minute events of
literary history is tedious and troublesome; it requires indeed
no great force of understanding, but often depends upon enquiries
which there is no opportunity of making, or is to be fetched from
books and pamphlets not always at hand.

[96]The Rehearsal was
played in 1671, and yet is represented as ridiculing passages in
The Conquest of Granada and
Assignation, which were not published till 1678, in
Marriage Alamode published in 1673, and in
Tyrannick Love of 1677. These contradictions shew
how rashly satire is applied.

[97] It is said that this farce was
originally intended against Davenant, who in the first draught
was characterised by the name of Bilboa. Davenant had been a
soldier and an adventurer.

[98] There is one passage in
The Rehearsal still remaining, which seems to have
related originally to Davenant. Bayes hurts his nose, and comes
in with brown paper applied to the bruise; how this affected
Dryden does not appear. Davenant's nose had suffered such
diminution by mishaps among the women, that a patch upon that
part evidently denoted him. ??? It is said likewise that Sir
Robert Howard was once meant. The design was probably to ridicule
the reigning poet, whoever he might be.

[99] Much of the personal satire, to
which it might owe its first reception, is now lost or obscured.
Bayes probably imitated the dress and mimicked the manner of
Dryden; the cant words which are so often in his mouth may be
supposed to have been Dryden's habitual phrases or customary
exclamations. Bayes, when he is to write, is blooded and purged:
this, as Lamotte relates himself to have heard, was the real
practice of the poet.

[100] There were other strokes in
The Rehearsal by which malice was gratified: the
debate between Love and Honour, which keeps prince Volscius in a
single boot, is said to have alluded to the misconduct of the
duke of Ormond, who lost Dublin to the rebels while he was toying
with a mistress.

[101] The earl of Rochester, to
suppress the reputation of Dryden, took Settle into his
protection, and endeavoured to persuade the publick that its
approbation had been to that time misplaced. Settle was a while
in high reputation: his Empress of Morocco, having
first delighted the town, was carried in triumph to Whitehall,
and played by the ladies of the court. Now was the poetical
meteor at the highest; the next moment began its fall. Rochester
withdrew his patronage; seemingly resolved, says one of his
biographers, 'to have a judgement contrary to that of the town';
perhaps being unable to endure any reputation beyond a certain
height, even when he had himself contributed to raise it.

[102] Neither criticks nor rivals did
Dryden much mischief, unless they gained from his own temper the
power of vexing him, which his frequent bursts of resentment give
reason to suspect. He is always angry at some past, or afraid of
some future censure; but he lessens the smart of his wounds by
the balm of his own approbation, and endeavours to repel the
shafts of criticism by opposing a shield of adamantine
confidence.

[103] The perpetual accusation
produced against him was that of plagiarism, against which he
never attempted any vigorous defence; for, though he was
sometimes injuriously censured, he would by denying part of the
charge have confessed the rest; and as his adversaries had the
proof in their own hands, he, who knew that wit had little power
against facts, wisely left in that perplexity which generality
produces a question which it was his interest to suppress, and
which, unless provoked by vindication, few were likely to
examine.

[104] Though the life of a writer,
from about thirty-five to sixty-three, may be supposed to have
been sufficiently busied by the composition of eight and twenty
pieces for the stage, Dryden found room in the same space for
many other undertakings.

[105] But how much soever he wrote he
was at least once suspected of writing more; for in 1679 a paper
of verses, called An Essay on Satire, was shewn
about in manuscript, by which the earl of Rochester, the dutchess
of Portsmouth, and others, were so much provoked that, as was
supposed, for the actors were never discovered, they procured
Dryden, whom they suspected as the author, to be waylaid and
beaten. This incident is mentioned by the duke of
Buckinghamshire, the true writer, in his Art of
Poetry; where he says of Dryden,

'Though prais'd and beaten for another's rhymes, His own
deserves as great applause sometimes.'

[106] His reputation in time was such
that his name was thought necessary to the success of every
poetical or literary performance, and therefore he was engaged to
contribute something, whatever it might be, to many publications.
He prefixed the Life of Polybius to the translation
of Sir Henry Sheers; and those of Lucian and Plutarch to versions
of their works by different hands. Of the English
Tacitus he translated the first book, and, if Gordon
be credited, translated it from the French. Such a charge can
hardly be mentioned without some degree of indignation; but it is
not, I suppose, so much to be inferred that Dryden wanted the
literature necessary to the perusal of Tacitus, as that,
considering himself as hidden in a crowd, he had no awe of the
publick, and writing merely for money was contented to get it by
the nearest way.

[107] In 1680, the Epistles of
Ovid being translated by the poets of the time, among
which one was the work of Dryden, and another of Dryden and Lord
Mulgrave, it was necessary to introduce them by a preface; and
Dryden, who on such occasions was regularly summoned, prefixed a
discourse upon translation, which was then struggling for the
liberty that it now enjoys. Why it should find any difficulty in
breaking the shackles of verbal interpretation, which must for
ever debar it from elegance, it would be difficult to conjecture,
were not the power of prejudice every day observed. The authority
of Jonson, Sandys, and Holiday had fixed the judgement of the
nation; and it was not easily believed that a better way could be
found than they had taken, though Fanshaw, Denham, Waller, and
Cowley had tried to give examples of a different practice.

[108] In 1681 Dryden became yet more
conspicuous by uniting politicks with poetry, in the memorable
satire called Absalom and Achitophel, written
against the faction which, by lord Shaftesbury's incitement, set
the duke of Monmouth at its head.

[109] Of this poem, in which personal
satire was applied to the support of publick principles, and in
which therefore every mind was interested, the reception was
eager, and the sale so large that my father, an old bookseller,
told me he had not known it equalled but by Sacheverell's
trial.

[110] The reason of this general
perusal Addison has attempted to derive from the delight which
the mind feels in the investigation of secrets; and thinks that
curiosity to decypher the names procured readers to the poem.
There is no need to enquire why those verses were read, which to
all the attractions of wit, elegance, and harmony added the
co-operation of all the factious passions, and filled every mind
with triumph or resentment.

[111] It could not be supposed that
all the provocation given by Dryden would be endured without
resistance or reply. Both his person and his party were exposed
in their turns to the shafts of satire, which, though neither so
well pointed nor perhaps so well aimed, undoubtedly drew
blood.

[112] One of these poems is called
Dryden's Satire on his Muse, ascribed, though, as
Pope says, falsely, to Somers, who was afterwards Chancellor. The
poem, whose soever it was, has much virulence, and some
spriteliness. The writer tells all the ill that he can collect
both of Dryden and his friends.

[113] The poem of Absalom and
Achitophel had two answers, now both forgotten: one called
Azaria and Hushai, the other Absalom
Senior. Of these hostile compositions Dryden apparently
imputes Absalom Senior to Settle, by quoting in his
verses against him the second line. Azaria and
Hushai was, as Wood says, imputed to him, though it is
somewhat unlikely that he should write twice on the same
occasion. This is a difficulty which I cannot remove, for want of
a minuter knowledge of poetical transactions.

[114] The same year he published
The Medal, of which the subject is a medal struck on
lord Shaftesbury's escape from a prosecution, by the
ignoramus of a grand jury of Londoners.

[115] In both poems he maintains the
same principles, and saw them both attacked by the same
antagonist. Elkanah Settle, who had answered
Absalom, appeared with equal courage in opposition
to The Medal, and published an answer called
The Medal Reversed, with so much success in both
encounters that he left the palm doubtful, and divided the
suffrages of the nation. Such are the revolutions of fame, or
such is the prevalence of fashion, that the man whose works have
not yet been thought to deserve the care of collecting them; who
died forgotten in an hospital; and whose latter years were spent
in contriving shows for fairs, and carrying an elegy or
epithalamium, of which the beginning and end were occasionally
varied, but the intermediate parts were always the same, to every
house where there was a funeral or a wedding — might with
truth have had inscribed upon his stone

'Here lies the Rival and Antagonist of Dryden.'

[116] Settle was for this rebellion
severely chastised by Dryden under the name of Doeg, in the
second part of Absalom and Achitophel, and was
perhaps for his factious audacity made the city poet, whose
annual office was to describe the glories of the Mayor's day. Of
these bards he was the last, and seems not much to have deserved
even this degree of regard, if it was paid to his political
opinions; for he afterwards wrote a panegyrick on the virtues of
judge Jefferies, and what more could have been done by the
meanest zealot for prerogative?

[117] Of translated fragments or
occasional poems to enumerate the titles or settle the dates
would be tedious, with little use. It may be observed that as
Dryden's genius was commonly excited by some personal regard he
rarely writes upon a general topick.

[118] Soon after the accession of
king James, when the design of reconciling the nation to the
church of Rome became apparent, and the religion of the court
gave the only efficacious title to its favours, Dryden declared
himself a convert to popery. This at any other time might have
passed with little censure. Sir Kenelm Digby embraced popery; the
two Rainolds reciprocally converted one another; and
Chillingworth himself was a while so entangled in the wilds of
controversy as to retire for quiet to an infallible church. If
men of argument and study can find such difficulties or such
motives, as may either unite them to the church of Rome or detain
them in uncertainty, there can be no wonder that a man, who
perhaps never enquired why he was a protestant, should by an
artful and experienced disputant be made a papist, overborne by
the sudden violence of new and unexpected arguments, or deceived
by a representation which shews only the doubts on one part and
only the evidence on the other.

[119] That conversion will always be
suspected that apparently concurs with interest. He that never
finds his error till it hinders his progress towards wealth or
honour will not be thought to love Truth only for herself. Yet it
may easily happen that information may come at a commodious time;
and as truth and interest are not by any fatal necessity at
variance, that one may by accident introduce the other. When
opinions are struggling into popularity the arguments by which
they are opposed or defended become more known; and he that
changes his profession would perhaps have changed it before, with
the like opportunities of instruction. This was then the state of
popery; every artifice was used to shew it in its fairest form:
and it must be owned to be a religion of external appearance
sufficiently attractive.

[120] It is natural to hope that a
comprehensive is likewise an elevated soul, and that whoever is
wise is also honest. I am willing to believe that Dryden, having
employed his mind, active as it was, upon different studies, and
filled it, capacious as it was, with other materials, came
unprovided to the controversy, and wanted rather skill to
discover the right than virtue to maintain it. But enquiries into
the heart are not for man; we must now leave him to his
Judge.

[121] The priests, having
strengthened their cause by so powerful an adherent, were not
long before they brought him into action. They engaged him to
defend the controversial papers found in the strong-box of
Charles the Second, and, what yet was harder, to defend them
against Stillingfleet.

[122] With hopes of promoting popery
he was employed to translate Maimbourg's History of the
League, which he published with a large introduction. His
name is likewise prefixed to the English Life of Francis
Xavier; but I know not that he ever owned himself the
translator. Perhaps the use of his name was a pious fraud, which
however seems not to have had much effect; for neither of the
books, I believe, was ever popular.

[123] The version of Xavier's
Life is commended by Brown, in a pamphlet not written to
flatter; and the occasion of it is said to have been that the
Queen, when she solicited a son, made vows to him as her tutelary
saint.

[124] He was supposed to have
undertaken to translate Varillas's History of
Heresies, and, when Burnet published Remarks upon it, to
have written an Answer upon which Burnet makes the
following observation:

'I have been informed from England that a gentleman, who is
famous [known] both for poetry and several other things [and
other things], had spent three months in translating M.
Varillas's History, but that, as soon as my
Reflections appeared, he discontinued his labour,
finding the credit of his author was gone. Now, if he thinks it
is recovered by his Answer, he will perhaps go on
with his translation; and this may be, for aught I know, as good
an entertainment for him as the conversation that he had set on
between the Hinds and Panthers, and all the rest of animals, for
whom M. Varillas may serve well enough as an author: and this
history and that poem are such extraordinary things of their
kind, that it will be but suitable to see the author of the worst
poem become likewise the translator of the worst history that the
age has produced. If his grace and his wit improve both
proportionably he will hardly find that he has gained much by the
change he has made, from having no religion to chuse one of the
worst. It is true he had somewhat to sink from in [the] matter of
wit; but as for his morals, it is scarce possible for him to grow
a worse man than he was. He has lately wreaked his malice on me
for spoiling his three months' labour; but in it he has done me
all the honour that any man can receive from him, which is to be
railed at by him. If I had ill-nature enough to prompt me to wish
a very bad wish for him, it should be that he would go on and
finish his translation. By that it will appear whether the
English nation, which is the most competent judge in this matter,
has, upon the seeing our debate, pronounced in M. Varillas's
favour, or in mine. It is true Mr. D. will suffer a little by it;
but at least it will serve to keep him in from other
extravagancies; and if he gains little honour by this work, yet
he cannot lose so much by it as he has done by his last
employment.'

[125] Having probably felt his own
inferiority in theological controversy he was desirous of trying
whether, by bringing poetry to aid his arguments, he might become
a more efficacious defender of his new profession. To reason in
verse was, indeed, one of his powers; but subtilty and harmony
united are still feeble, when opposed to truth.

[126] Actuated therefore by zeal for
Rome, or hope of fame, he published The Hind and
Panther, a poem in which the church of Rome, figured by
the milk-white Hind, defends her tenets against the
church of England, represented by the Panther, a
beast beautiful, but spotted.

[127] A fable which exhibits two
beasts talking Theology appears at once full of absurdity; and it
was accordingly ridiculed in The City Mouse and Country
Mouse, a parody written by Montague, afterwards earl of
Halifax, and Prior, who then gave the first specimen of his
abilities.

[128] The conversion of such a man at
such a time was not likely to pass uncensured. Three dialogues
were published by the facetious Thomas Brown, of which the two
first were called Reasons of Mr. Bayes's changing his
religion, and the third The Reasons of Mr. Hains the
player's conversion and re-conversion. The first was
printed in 1688, the second not till 1690, the third in 1691. The
clamour seems to have been long continued, and the subject to
have strongly fixed the publick attention.

[129] In the two first dialogues
Bayes is brought into the company of Crites and Eugenius, with
whom he had formerly debated on dramatick poetry. The two talkers
in the third are Mr. Bayes and Mr. Hains.

[130] Brown was a man not deficient
in literature nor destitute of fancy; but he seems to have
thought it the pinnacle of excellence to be a merry
fellow, and therefore laid out his powers upon small jests
or gross buffoonery, so that his performances have little
intrinsick value, and were read only while they were recommended
by the novelty of the event that occasioned them.

[131] These dialogues are like his
other works: what sense or knowledge they contain is disgraced by
the garb in which it is exhibited. One great source of pleasure
is to call Dryden 'little Bayes.' Ajax, who happens to be
mentioned, is 'he that wore as many cowhides upon his shield as
would have furnished half the king's army with shoe-leather.'

[132] Being asked whether he has seen
The Hind and Panther, Crites answers:

'Seen it, Mr. Bayes! why I can stir no where but it persues
me; it haunts me worse than a pewter-buttoned serjeant does a
decayed cit. Sometimes I meet it in a band-box, when my laundress
brings home my linen; sometimes, whether I will or no, it lights
my pipe at a coffee-house; sometimes it surprises me in a
trunk-maker's shop; and sometimes it refreshes my memory for me
on the backside of a Chancery-lane parcel. For your comfort too,
Mr. Bayes, I have not only seen it, as you may perceive, but have
read it too, and can quote it as freely upon occasion as a frugal
tradesman can quote that noble treatise the Worth of a
Penny to his extravagant 'prentice, that revels in
[cockale], stewed apples, and penny custards.'

[133] The whole animation of these
compositions arises from a profusion of ludicrous and affected
comparisons.

'To secure one's chastity,' says Bayes, 'little more is
necessary than to leave off a correspondence with the other sex,
which to a wise man is no greater a punishment than it would be
to a fanatick parson to be forbid seeing The Cheats
and The Committee, or for my Lord Mayor and Aldermen
to be interdicted the sight of The London Cuckold.'
— This is the general strain, and therefore I shall be
easily excused the labour of more transcription.

[134] Brown does not wholly forget
past transactions:

'[As] You began,' says Crites to Bayes, 'with a very
indifferent religion, and [so] have not [much] mended the matter
in your last choice; it was but reason that your Muse, which
appeared first in a Tyrant's quarrel, should employ her last
efforts to justify the usurpations of the Hind.'

[135] Next year the nation was
summoned to celebrate the birth of the Prince. Now was the time
for Dryden to rouse his imagination, and strain his voice. Happy
days were at hand, and he was willing to enjoy and diffuse the
anticipated blessings. He published a poem, filled with
predictions of greatness and prosperity — predictions of
which it is not necessary to tell how they have been
verified.

[136] A few months passed after these
joyful notes, and every blossom of popish hope was blasted for
ever by the Revolution. A papist now could be no longer Laureat.
The revenue, which he had enjoyed with so much pride and praise,
was transferred to Shadwell, an old enemy whom he had formerly
stigmatised by the name of Og. Dryden could not decently complain
that he was deposed; but seemed very angry that Shadwell
succeeded him, and has therefore celebrated the intruder's
inauguration in a poem exquisitely satirical, called Mac
Flecknoe, of which The Dunciad, as Pope
himself declares, is an imitation, though more extended in its
plan, and more diversified in its incidents.

[137] It is related by Prior that
Lord Dorset, when as chamberlain he was constrained to eject
Dryden from his office, gave him from his own purse an allowance
equal to his salary. This is no romantick or incredible act of
generosity; an hundred a year is often enough given to claims
less cogent, by men less famed for liberality. Yet Dryden always
represented himself as suffering under a publick infliction, and
once particularly demands respect for the patience with which he
endured the loss of his little fortune. His patron might, indeed,
enjoin him to suppress his bounty; but if he suffered nothing, he
should not have complained.

[138] During the short reign of King
James he had written nothing for the stage, being, in his own
opinion, more profitably employed in controversy and flattery. Of
praise he might perhaps have been less lavish without
inconvenience, for James was never said to have much regard for
poetry: he was to be flattered only by adopting his religion.

[139] Times were now changed: Dryden
was no longer the court-poet, and was to look back for support to
his former trade; and having waited about two years, either
considering himself as discountenanced by the publick, or perhaps
expecting a second revolution, he produced Don
Sebastian in 1690; and in the next four years four dramas
more.

[140] In 1693 appeared a new version
of Juvenal and Persius. Of Juvenal he translated the first,
third, sixth, tenth, and sixteenth satires, and of Persius the
whole work. On this occasion he introduced his two sons to the
publick, as nurselings of the Muses. The fourteenth of Juvenal
was the work of John, and the seventh of Charles Dryden. He
prefixed a very ample preface in the form of a dedication to lord
Dorset; and there gives an account of the design which he had
once formed to write an epick poem on the actions either of
Arthur or the Black Prince. He considered the epick as
necessarily including some kind of supernatural agency, and had
imagined a new kind of contest between the guardian angels of
kingdoms, of whom he conceived that each might be represented
zealous for his charge, without any intended opposition to the
purposes of the Supreme Being, of which all created minds must in
part be ignorant.

[141] This is the most reasonable
scheme of celestial interposition that ever was formed. The
surprises and terrors of enchantments, which have succeeded to
the intrigues and oppositions of pagan deities, afford very
striking scenes, and open a vast extent to the imagination; but,
as Boileau observes, and Boileau will be seldom found mistaken,
with this incurable defect, that in a contest between heaven and
hell we know at the beginning which is to prevail: for this
reason we follow Rinaldo to the enchanted wood with more
curiosity than terror.

[142] In the scheme of Dryden there
is one great difficulty, which yet he would perhaps have had
address enough to surmount. In a war justice can be but on one
side, and to entitle the hero to the protection of angels he must
fight in the defence of indubitable right. Yet some of the
celestial beings, thus opposed to each other, must have been
represented as defending guilt.

[143] That this poem was never
written is reasonably to be lamented. It would doubtless have
improved our numbers and enlarged our language, and might perhaps
have contributed by pleasing instruction to rectify our opinions
and purify our manners.

[144] What he required as the
indispensable condition of such an undertaking, a publick
stipend, was not likely in those times to be obtained. Riches
were not become familiar to us, nor had the nation yet learned to
be liberal.

[145] This plan he charged Blackmore
with stealing; 'only,' says he, 'the guardian angels of kingdoms
were machines too ponderous for him to manage.'

[146] In 1694 he began the most
laborious and difficult of all his works, the translation of
Virgil; from which he borrowed two months, that he might turn
Fresnoy's Art of Painting into English prose. The
preface, which he boasts to have written in twelve mornings,
exhibits a parallel of poetry and painting, with a miscellaneous
collection of critical remarks, such as cost a mind stored like
his no labour to produce them.

[147] In 1697 he published his
version of the works of Virgil, and, that no opportunity of
profit might be lost, dedicated the Pastorals to the
lord Clifford, the Georgicks to the earl of
Chesterfield, and the Eneid to the earl of Mulgrave.
This oeconomy of flattery, at once lavish and discreet, did not
pass without observation.

[148] This translation was censured
by Milbourne, a clergyman, styled by Pope 'the fairest of
criticks,' because he exhibited his own version to be compared
with that which he condemned.

[149] His last work was his
Fables, published in 1699, in consequence, as is
supposed, of a contract now in the hands of Mr. Tonson, by which
he obliged himself, in consideration of three hundred pounds, to
finish for the press ten thousand verses.

[150] In this volume is comprised the
well-known Ode on St. Cecilia's Day, which, as
appeared by a letter communicated to Dr. Birch, he spent a
fortnight in composing and correcting. But what is this to the
patience and diligence of Boileau, whose Equivoque,
a poem of only three hundred forty-six lines, took from his life
eleven months to write it, and three years to revise it!

[151] Part of this book of
Fables is the first Iliad in English,
intended as a specimen of a version of the whole. Considering
into what hands Homer was to fall, the reader cannot but rejoice
that this project went no further.

[152] The time was now at hand which
was to put an end to all his schemes and labours. On the first of
May, 1701, having been some time, as he tells us, a cripple in
his limbs, he died in Gerard-street of a mortification in his
leg.

[153] There is extant a wild story
relating to some vexatious events that happened at his funeral,
which, at the end of Congreve's Life, by a writer of
I know not what credit, are thus related, as I find the account
transferred to a biographical dictionary:

'Mr. Dryden dying on the Wednesday morning, Dr. Thomas Sprat,
then bishop of Rochester and dean of Westminster, sent the next
day to the lady Elizabeth Howard, Mr. Dryden's widow, that he
would make a present of the ground, which was forty pounds, with
all the other Abbey-fees. The lord Halifax likewise sent to the
lady Elizabeth and Mr. Charles Dryden her son, that if they would
give him leave to bury Mr. Dryden he would inter him with a
gentleman's private funeral, and afterwards bestow five hundred
pounds on a monument in the Abbey; which, as they had no reason
to refuse, they accepted. On the Saturday following the company
came: the corpse was put into a velvet hearse, and eighteen
mourning coaches filled with company attended. When they were
just ready to move the lord Jefferies, son of the lord chancellor
Jefferies, with some of his rakish companions coming by, asked
whose funeral it was, and being told Mr. Dryden's he said, "What,
shall Dryden, the greatest honour and ornament of the nation, be
buried after this private manner! No, gentlemen, let all that
loved Mr. Dryden and honour his memory alight and join with me in
gaining my lady's consent to let me have the honour of his
interment, which shall be after another manner than this; and I
will bestow a thousand pounds on a monument in the Abbey for
him." The gentlemen in the coaches, not knowing of the bishop of
Rochester's favour, nor of the lord Halifax's generous design
(they both having, out of respect to the family, enjoined the
lady Elizabeth and her son to keep their favour concealed to the
world, and let it pass for their own expence), readily came out
of the coaches, and attended lord Jefferies up to the lady's
bedside, who was then sick; he repeated the purport of what he
had before said; but she absolutely refusing, he fell on his
knees, vowing never to rise till his request was granted. The
rest of the company by his desire kneeled also; and the lady,
being under a sudden surprise, fainted away. As soon as she
recovered her speech, she cried, "No, no." "Enough, gentlemen,"
replied he; "my lady is very good, she says, 'Go, go.'" She
repeated her former words with all her strength, but in vain; for
her feeble voice was lost in their acclamations of joy: and the
lord Jefferies ordered the hearsemen to carry the corpse to Mr.
Russel's, an undertaker's in Cheapside, and leave it there t???
which, he added, should be after the royal manner. His directions
were obeyed, the company dispersed, and lady Elizabeth and her
son remained inconsolable. The next day Mr. Charles Dryden waited
on the lord Halifax and the bishop, to excuse his mother and
himself by relating the real truth. But neither his lordship nor
the bishop would admit of any plea; especially the latter, who
had the Abbey lighted, the ground opened, the choir attending, an
anthem ready set, and himself waiting for some time without any
corpse to bury. The undertaker, after three days' expectance of
orders for embalment without receiving any, waited on the lord
Jefferies, who, pretending ignorance of the matter, turned it off
with an ill-natured jest, saying, "That those who observed the
orders of a drunken frolick deserved no better; that he
remembered nothing at all of it; and that he might do what he
pleased with the corpse." Upon this, the undertaker waited upon
the lady Elizabeth and her son, and threatened to bring the
corpse home, and set it before the door. They desired a day's
respite, which was granted. Mr. Charles Dryden wrote a handsome
letter to the lord Jefferies, who returned it with this cool
answer, "That he knew nothing of the matter, and would be
troubled no more about it." He then addressed the lord Halifax
and the bishop of Rochester, who absolutely refused to do any
thing in it. In this distress Dr. Garth sent for the corpse to
the College of Physicians, and proposed a funeral by
subscription, to which himself set a most noble example. At last
a day, about three weeks after Mr. Dryden's decease, was
appointed for the interment: Dr. Garth pronounced a fine Latin
oration at the College over the corpse; which was attended to the
Abbey by a numerous train of coaches. When the funeral was over
Mr. Charles Dryden sent a challenge to the lord Jefferies, who
refusing to answer it, he sent several others, and went often
himself; but could neither get a letter delivered nor admittance
to speak to him: which so incensed him that he resolved, since
his lordship refused to answer him like a gentleman, that he
would watch an opportunity to meet and fight off-hand, though
with all the rules of honour; which his lordship hearing, left
the town: and Mr. Charles Dryden could never have the
satisfaction of meeting him, though he sought it till his death
with the utmost application.'

[154] This story I once intended to
omit as it appears with no great evidence; nor have I met with
any confirmation but in a letter of Farquhar, and he only relates
that the funeral of Dryden was tumultuary and confused.

[155] Supposing the story true we may
remark that the gradual change of manners, though imperceptible
in the process, appears great when different times, and those not
very distant, are compared. If at this time a young drunken Lord
should interrupt the pompous regularity of a magnificent funeral
what would be the event, but that he would be justled out of the
way, and compelled to be quiet? If he should thrust himself into
a house, he would be sent roughly away; and what is yet more to
the honour of the present time, I believe that those who had
subscribed to the funeral of a man like Dryden would not, for
such an accident, have withdrawn their contributions.

[156] He was buried among the poets
in Westminster Abbey, where, though the duke of Newcastle had, in
a general dedication prefixed by Congreve to his dramatick works,
accepted thanks for his intention of erecting him a monument, he
lay long without distinction, till the duke of Buckinghamshire
gave him a tablet, inscribed only with the name of Dryden.

[157] He married the lady Elizabeth
Howard, daughter of the earl of Berkshire, with circumstances,
according to the satire imputed to lord Somers, not very
honourable to either party: by her he had three sons, Charles,
John, and Henry. Charles was usher of the palace to Pope Clement
the XIth, and visiting England in 1704, was drowned in an attempt
to swim across the Thames at Windsor.

[158] John was author of a comedy
called The Husband his own Cuckold. He is said to
have died at Rome. Henry entered into some religious order. It is
some proof of Dryden's sincerity in his second religion, that he
taught it to his sons. A man conscious of hypocritical profession
in himself is not likely to convert others; and as his sons were
qualified in 1693 to appear among the translators of Juvenal,
they must have been taught some religion before their father's
change.

[159] Of the person of Dryden I know
not any account; of his mind the portrait which has been left by
Congreve, who knew him with great familiarity, is such as adds
our love of his manners to our admiration of his genius.

'He was,' we are told, 'of a nature exceedingly humane and
compassionate, ready to forgive injuries, and capable of a
sincere reconciliation with those that had offended him. His
friendship, where he professed it, went beyond his professions.
He was of a very easy, of very pleasing access; but somewhat
slow, and, as it were, diffident in his advances to others: he
had that in his nature which abhorred intrusion into any society
whatever. He was therefore less known, and consequently his
character became more liable to misapprehensions and
misrepresentations: he was very modest, and very easily to be
discountenanced in his approaches to his equals or superiors. As
his reading had been very extensive, so was he very happy in a
memory tenacious of every thing that he had read. He was not more
possessed of knowledge than he was communicative of it; but then
his communication was by no means pedantick or imposed upon the
conversation, but just such, and went so far as, by the natural
turn of the conversation in which he was engaged, it was
necessarily promoted or required. He was extreme ready, and
gentle in his correction of the errors of any writer who thought
fit to consult him, and full as ready and patient to admit of the
reprehensions of others in respect of his own oversights or
mistakes.'

[160] To this account of Congreve
nothing can be objected but the fondness of friendship; and to
have excited that fondness in such a mind is no small degree of
praise. The disposition of Dryden, however, is shewn in this
character rather as it exhibited itself in cursory conversation,
than as it operated on the more important parts of life. His
placability and his friendship indeed were solid virtues; but
courtesy and good-humour are often found with little real worth.
Since Congreve, who knew him well, has told us no more, the rest
must be collected as it can from other testimonies, and
particularly from those notices which Dryden has very liberally
given us of himself.

[161] The modesty which made him so
slow to advance, and so easy to be repulsed, was certainly no
suspicion of deficient merit, or unconsciousness of his own
value: he appears to have known in its whole extent the dignity
of his character, and to have set a very high value on his own
powers and performances. He probably did not offer his
conversation, because he expected it to be solicited; and he
retired from a cold reception, not submissive but indignant, with
such reverence of his own greatness as made him unwilling to
expose it to neglect or violation.

[162] His modesty was by no means
inconsistent with ostentatiousness: he is diligent enough to
remind the world of his merit, and expresses with very little
scruple his high opinion of his own powers; but his
self-commendations are read without scorn or indignation: we
allow his claims, and love his frankness.

[163] Tradition, however, has not
allowed that his confidence in himself exempted him from jealousy
of others. He is accused of envy and insidiousness; and is
particularly charged with inciting Creech to translate Horace,
that he might lose the reputation which Lucretius had given
him.

[164] Of this charge we immediately
discover that it is merely conjectural: the purpose was such as
no man would confess; and a crime that admits no proof, why
should we believe?

[165] He has been described as
magisterially presiding over the younger writers, and assuming
the distribution of poetical fame; but he who excels has a right
to teach, and he whose judgement is incontestable may, without
usurpation, examine and decide.

[166] Congreve represents him as
ready to advise and instruct; but there is reason to believe that
his communication was rather useful than entertaining. He
declares of himself that he was saturnine, and not one of those
whose spritely sayings diverted company; and one of his censurers
makes him say,

'Nor wine nor love [Nor love nor wine] could ever see me
gay; To writing bred, I knew not what to say.'

[167] There are men whose powers
operate only at leisure and in retirement, and whose intellectual
vigour deserts them in conversation; whom merriment confuses, and
objection disconcerts; whose bashfulness restrains their
exertion, and suffers them not to speak till the time of speaking
is past; or whose attention to their own character makes them
unwilling to utter at hazard what has not been considered, and
cannot be recalled.

[168] Of Dryden's sluggishness in
conversation it is vain to search or to guess the cause. He
certainly wanted neither sentiments nor language; his
intellectual treasures were great, though they were locked up
from his own use. 'His thoughts,' when he wrote, 'flowed in upon
him so fast, that his only care was which to chuse, and which to
reject.' Such rapidity of composition naturally promises a flow
of talk, yet we must be content to believe what an enemy says of
him, when he likewise says it of himself. But whatever was his
character as a companion, it appears that he lived in familiarity
with the highest persons of his time. It is related by Carte of
the duke of Ormond that he used often to pass a night with
Dryden, and those with whom Dryden consorted: who they were Carte
has not told; but certainly the convivial table at which Ormond
sat was not surrounded with a plebeian society. He was indeed
reproached with boasting of his familiarity with the great; and
Horace will support him in the opinion that to please superiors
is not the lowest kind of merit.

[169] The merit of pleasing must,
however, be estimated by the means. Favour is not always gained
by good actions or laudable qualities. Caresses and preferments
are often bestowed on the auxiliaries of vice, the procurers of
pleasure, or the flatterers of vanity. Dryden has never been
charged with any personal agency unworthy of a good character: he
abetted vice and vanity only with his pen. One of his enemies has
accused him of lewdness in his conversation; but if accusation
without proof be credited, who shall be innocent?

[170] His works afford too many
examples of dissolute licentiousness and abject adulation; but
they were probably, like his merriment, artificial and
constrained — the effects of study and meditation, and his
trade rather than his pleasure.

[171] Of the mind that can trade in
corruption, and can deliberately pollute itself with ideal
wickedness for the sake of spreading the contagion in society, I
wish not to conceal or excuse the depravity. — Such
degradation of the dignity of genius, such abuse of superlative
abilities, cannot be contemplated but with grief and indignation.
What consolation can be had Dryden has afforded, by living to
repent, and to testify his repentance.

[172] Of dramatick immorality he did
not want examples among his predecessors, or companions among his
contemporaries; but in the meanness and servility of hyperbolical
adulation I know not whether, since the days in which the Roman
emperors were deified, he has been ever equalled, except by Afra
Behn in an address to Eleanor Gwyn. When once he has undertaken
the task of praise he no longer retains shame in himself, nor
supposes it in his patron. As many odoriferous bodies are
observed to diffuse perfumes from year to year without sensible
diminution of bulk or weight, he appears never to have
impoverished his mint of flattery by his expences, however
lavish. He had all forms of excellence, intellectual and moral,
combined in his mind, with endless variation; and when he had
scattered on the hero of the day the golden shower of wit and
virtue, he had ready for him, whom he wished to court on the
morrow, new wit and virtue with another stamp. Of this kind of
meanness he never seems to decline the practice, or lament the
necessity: he considers the great as entitled to encomiastick
homage, and brings praise rather as a tribute than a gift, more
delighted with the fertility of his invention than mortified by
the prostitution of his judgement. It is indeed not certain that
on these occasions his judgement much rebelled against his
interest. There are minds which easily sink into submission, that
look on grandeur with undistinguishing reverence, and discover no
defect where there is elevation of rank and affluence of
riches.

[173] With his praises of others and
of himself is always intermingled a strain of discontent and
lamentation, a sullen growl of resentment, or a querulous murmur
of distress. His works are undervalued, his merit is unrewarded,
and 'he has few thanks to pay his stars that he was born among
Englishmen.' To his criticks he is sometimes contemptuous,
sometimes resentful, and sometimes submissive. The writer who
thinks his works formed for duration mistakes his interest when
he mentions his enemies. He degrades his own dignity by shewing
that he was affected by their censures, and gives lasting
importance to names which, left to themselves, would vanish from
remembrance. From this principle Dryden did not oft depart; his
complaints are for the greater part general; he seldom pollutes
his page with an adverse name. He condescended indeed to a
controversy with Settle, in which he perhaps may be considered
rather as assaulting than repelling; and since Settle is sunk
into oblivion his libel remains injurious only to himself.

[174] Among answers to criticks no
poetical attacks or altercations are to be included: they are,
like other poems, effusions of genius, produced as much to obtain
praise as to obviate censure. These Dryden practised, and in
these he excelled.

[175] Of Collier, Blackmore, and
Milbourne he has made mention in the preface to his
Fables. To the censure of Collier, whose remarks may
be rather termed admonitions than criticisms, he makes little
reply; being, at the age of sixty-eight, attentive to better
things than the claps of a playhouse. He complains of Collier's
rudeness, and the 'horse-play of his raillery'; and asserts that
'in many places he has perverted by his glosses the meaning' of
what he censures; but in other things he confesses that he is
justly taxed, and says, with great calmness and candour, 'I have
pleaded guilty to all thoughts or [and] expressions of mine that
[which] can be truly accused [argued] of obscenity, immorality,
or profaneness, and retract them. If he be my enemy, let him
triumph; if he be my friend, [as I have given him no personal
occasion to be otherwise], he will be glad of my repentance.'
Yet, as our best dispositions are imperfect, he left standing in
the same book a reflection on Collier of great asperity, and
indeed of more asperity than wit.

[176] Blackmore he represents as made
his enemy by the poem of Absalom and Achitophel,
which 'he thinks a little hard upon [on] his fanatick patrons [in
London]'; and charges him with borrowing the plan of his
Arthur from the preface to Juvenal, 'though he had,'
says he, 'the baseness not to acknowledge his benefactor, but
instead of it to traduce me in a libel.'

[177] The libel in which Blackmore
traduced him was a Satire upon Wit, in which, having
lamented the exuberance of false wit and the deficiency of true,
he proposes that all wit should be recoined before it is current,
and appoints masters of assay who shall reject all that is light
or debased.

''Tis true, that when the coarse and worthless dross Is
purg'd away, there will be mighty loss; Ev'n Congreve,
Southern, manly Wycherley, When thus refin'd, will grievous
sufferers be; Into the melting-pot when Dryden comes,
What horrid stench will rise, what noisome fumes! How will he
shrink, when all his lewd allay And wicked mixture shall be
purg'd away!'

Thus stands the passage in the last edition; but in the
original there was an abatement of the censure, beginning
thus:

'But what remains will be so pure, 'twill bear Th'
examination of the most severe.'

Blackmore, finding the censure resented and the civility
disregarded, ungenerously omitted the softer part. Such
variations discover a writer who consults his passions more than
his virtue; and it may be reasonably supposed that Dryden imputes
his enmity to its true cause.

[178] Of Milbourne he wrote only in
general terms, such as are always ready at the call of anger,
whether just or not: a short extract will be sufficient:

'He pretends a [this] quarrel to me, that I have fallen foul
upon [on] priesthood; if I have, I am only to ask pardon of good
priests, and am afraid his share [part] of the reparation will
come to little. Let him be satisfied that he shall never [not] be
able to force himself upon me for an adversary; I contemn him too
much to enter into competition with him.

'As for the rest of those who have written against me they are
such scoundrels that they deserve not the least notice to be
taken of them. Blackmore and Milbourne are only distinguished
from the crowd by being remembered to their infamy.'

[179] Dryden indeed discovered in
many of his writings an affected and absurd malignity to priests
and priesthood, which naturally raised him many enemies, and
which was sometimes as unseasonably resented as it was exerted.
Trapp is angry that he calls the sacrificer in the
Georgicks the 'holy butcher'; the translation is
indeed ridiculous, but Trapp's anger arises from his zeal, not
for the author, but the priest: as if any reproach of the follies
of paganism could be extended to the preachers of truth.

[180] Dryden's dislike of the
priesthood is imputed by Langbaine, and I think by Brown, to a
repulse which he suffered when he solicited ordination; but he
denies, in the preface to his Fables, that he ever
designed to enter into the church; and such a denial he would not
have hazarded, if he could have been convicted of falsehood.

[181] Malevolence to the clergy is
seldom at a great distance from irreverence of religion, and
Dryden affords no exception to this observation. His writings
exhibit many passages, which, with all the allowance that can be
made for characters and occasions, are such as piety would not
have admitted, and such as may vitiate light and unprincipled
minds. But there is no reason for supposing that he disbelieved
the religion which he disobeyed. He forgot his duty rather than
disowned it. His tendency to profaneness is the effect of levity,
negligence, and loose conversation, with a desire of
accommodating himself to the corruption of the times, by
venturing to be wicked as far as he durst. When he professed
himself a convert to Popery he did not pretend to have received
any new conviction of the fundamental doctrines of
Christianity.

[182] The persecution of criticks was
not the worst of his vexations: he was much more disturbed by the
importunities of want. His complaints of poverty are so
frequently repeated, either with the dejection of weakness
sinking in helpless misery, or the indignation of merit claiming
its tribute from mankind, that it is impossible not to detest the
age which could impose on such a man the necessity of such
solicitations, or not to despise the man who could submit to such
solicitations without necessity.

[183] Whether by the world's neglect
or his own imprudence I am afraid that the greatest part of his
life was passed in exigencies. Such outcries were surely never
uttered but in severe pain. Of his supplies or his expences no
probable estimate can now be made. Except the salary of the
Laureat, to which king James added the office of Historiographer,
perhaps with some additional emoluments, his whole revenue seems
to have been casual; and it is well known that he seldom lives
frugally who lives by chance. Hope is always liberal, and they
that trust her promises make little scruple of revelling to-day
on the profits of the morrow.

[184] Of his plays the profit was not
great, and of the produce of his other works very little
intelligence can be had. By discoursing with the late amiable Mr.
Tonson I could not find that any memorials of the transactions
between his predecessor and Dryden had been preserved, except the
following papers:

'I do hereby promise to pay John Dryden, Esq., or order, on
the 25th of March, 1699, the sum of two hundred and fifty
guineas, in consideration of ten thousand verses, which the said
John Dryden, Esq., is to deliver to me Jacob Tonson, when
finished, whereof seven thousand five hundred verses, more or
less, are already in the said Jacob Tonson's possession. And I do
hereby farther promise, and engage myself, to make up the said
sum of two hundred and fifty guineas three hundred pounds
sterling to the said John Dryden, Esq., his executors,
administrators, or assigns, at the beginning of the second
impression of the said ten thousand verses.

In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and seal, this
20th day of March, 169 8/9.

'Jacob Tonson.

'Sealed and delivered, being first duly stampt, pursuant
to the acts of parliament for that purpose, in the
presence of

'Ben. Portlock. 'Will. Congreve.' 'March 24th,
1698.

'Received then of Mr. Jacob Tonson the sum of two hundred
sixty-eight pounds fifteen shillings, in pursuance of an
agreement for ten thousand verses, to be delivered by me to the
said Jacob Tonson, whereof I have already delivered to him about
seven thousand five hundred, more or less; he the said Jacob
Tonson being obliged to make up the foresaid sum of two hundred
sixty-eight pounds fifteen shillings three hundred pounds at the
beginning of the second impression of the foresaid ten thousand
verses;

'I say, received by me

'John Dryden.

'Witness Charles Dryden.'

Two hundred and fifty guineas at 1l. 1s.
6d. is 268l. 15s.

[185] It is manifest from the dates
of this contract that it relates to the volume of
Fables, which contains about twelve thousand verses,
and for which therefore the payment must have been afterwards
enlarged.

[186] I have been told of another
letter yet remaining, in which he desires Tonson to bring him
money, to pay for a watch which he had ordered for his son, and
which the maker would not leave without the price.

[187] The inevitable consequence of
poverty is dependence. Dryden had probably no recourse in his
exigencies but to his bookseller. The particular character of
Tonson I do not know; but the general conduct of traders was much
less liberal in those times than in our own; their views were
narrower, and their manners grosser. To the mercantile ruggedness
of that race the delicacy of the poet was sometimes exposed. Lord
Bolingbroke, who in his youth had cultivated poetry, related to
Dr. King of Oxford, that one day, when he visited Dryden, they
heard, as they were conversing, another person entering the
house. 'This,' said Dryden, 'is Tonson. You will take care not to
depart before he goes away; for I have not completed the sheet
which I promised him; and if you leave me unprotected, I must
suffer all the rudeness to which his resentment can prompt his
tongue.'

[188] What rewards he obtained for
his poems, besides the payment of the bookseller, cannot be
known: Mr. Derrick, who consulted some of his relations, was
informed that his Fables obtained five hundred
pounds from the dutchess of Ormond, a present not unsuitable to
the magnificence of that splendid family; and he quotes Moyle as
relating that forty pounds were paid by a musical society for the
use of Alexander's Feast.

[189] In those days the £conomy of
government was yet unsettled, and the payments of the Exchequer
were dilatory and uncertain: of this disorder there is reason to
believe that the Laureat sometimes felt the effects; for in one
of his prefaces he complains of those who, being intrusted with
the distribution of the Prince's bounty, suffer those that depend
upon it to languish in penury.

[190] Of his petty habits or slight
amusements tradition has retained little. Of the only two men
whom I have found to whom he was personally known, one told me
that at the house which he frequented, called Will's
Coffee-house, the appeal upon any literary dispute was made to
him, and the other related that his armed chair, which in the
winter had a settled and prescriptive place by the fire, was in
the summer placed in the balcony; and that he called the two
places his winter and his summer seat. This is all the
intelligence which his two survivors afforded me.

[191] One of his opinions will do him
no honour in the present age, though in his own time, at least in
the beginning of it, he was far from having it confined to
himself. He put great confidence in the prognostications of
judicial astrology. In the Appendix to the Life of
Congreve is a narrative of some of his predictions
wonderfully fulfilled; but I know not the writer's means of
information, or character of veracity. That he had the
configurations of the horoscope in his mind, and considered them
as influencing the affairs of men, he does not forbear to
hint:

'The utmost malice of the [their] stars is past.'

'Now frequent trines the happier lights among,
And high-rais'd Jove, from his dark prison freed,
Those weights took off that on his planet hung, Will
gloriously the new-laid works succeed.'

He has elsewhere shewn his attention to the planetary powers;
and in the preface to his Fables has endeavoured
obliquely to justify his superstition, by attributing the same to
some of the Ancients. The letter, added to this narrative, leaves
no doubt of his notions or practice.

[192] So slight and so scanty is the
knowledge which I have been able to collect concerning the
private life and domestick manners of a man, whom every English
generation must mention with reverence as a critick and a
poet.

[193]Dryden
may be properly considered as the father of English criticism, as
the writer who first taught us to determine upon principles the
merit of composition. Of our former poets the greatest dramatist
wrote without rules, conducted through life and nature by a
genius that rarely misled, and rarely deserted him. Of the rest,
those who knew the laws of propriety had neglected to teach
them.

[194] Two Arts of English
Poetry were written in the days of Elizabeth by Webb and
Puttenham, from which something might be learned, and a few hints
had been given by Jonson and Cowley; but Dryden's Essay on
Dramatick Poetry was the first regular and valuable
treatise on the art of writing.

[195] He who, having formed his
opinions in the present age of English literature, turns back to
peruse this dialogue, will not perhaps find much increase of
knowledge or much novelty of instruction; but he is to remember
that critical principles were then in the hands of a few, who had
gathered them partly from the Ancients, and partly from the
Italians and French. The structure of dramatick poems was not
then generally understood. Audiences applauded by instinct, and
poets perhaps often pleased by chance.

[196] A writer who obtains his full
purpose loses himself in his own lustre. Of an opinion which is
no longer doubted, the evidence ceases to be examined. Of an art
universally practised, the first teacher is forgotten. Learning
once made popular is no longer learning: it has the appearance of
something which we have bestowed upon ourselves, as the dew
appears to rise from the field which it refreshes.

[197] To judge rightly of an author
we must transport ourselves to his time, and examine what were
the wants of his contemporaries, and what were his means of
supplying them. That which is easy at one time was difficult at
another. Dryden at least imported his science, and gave his
country what it wanted before; or rather, he imported only the
materials, and manufactured them by his own skill.

[198] The dialogue on the Drama was
one of his first essays of criticism, written when he was yet a
timorous candidate for reputation, and therefore laboured with
that diligence which he might allow himself somewhat to remit
when his name gave sanction to his positions, and his awe of the
public was abated, partly by custom, and partly by success. It
will not be easy to find in all the opulence of our language a
treatise so artfully variegated with successive representations
of opposite probabilities, so enlivened with imagery, so
brightened with illustrations. His portraits of the English
dramatists are wrought with great spirit and diligence. The
account of Shakespeare may stand as a perpetual model of
encomiastick criticism; exact without minuteness, and lofty
without exaggeration. The praise lavished by Longinus, on the
attestation of the heroes of Marathon by Demosthenes, fades away
before it. In a few lines is exhibited a character, so extensive
in its comprehension and so curious in its limitations, that
nothing can be added, diminished, or reformed; nor can the
editors and admirers of Shakespeare, in all their emulation of
reverence, boast of much more than of having diffused and
paraphrased this epitome of excellence, of having changed
Dryden's gold for baser metal, of lower value though of greater
bulk.

[199] In this, and in all his other
essays on the same subject, the criticism of Dryden is the
criticism of a poet; not a dull collection of theorems, nor a
rude detection of faults, which perhaps the censor was not able
to have committed; but a gay and vigorous dissertation, where
delight is mingled with instruction, and where the author proves
his right of judgement by his power of performance.

[200] The different manner and effect
with which critical knowledge may be conveyed was perhaps never
more clearly exemplified than in the performances of Rymer and
Dryden. It was said of a dispute between two mathematicians,
'malim cum Scaligero errare, quam cum Clavio recte sapere'; that
'it was more eligible to go wrong with one than right with the
other.' A tendency of the same kind every mind must feel at the
perusal of Dryden's prefaces and Rymer's discourses. With Dryden
we are wandering in quest of Truth, whom we find, if we find her
at all, drest in the graces of elegance; and if we miss her, the
labour of the pursuit rewards itself: we are led only through
fragrance and flowers. Rymer, without taking a nearer, takes a
rougher way; every step is to be made through thorns and
brambles, and Truth, if we meet her, appears repulsive by her
mien and ungraceful by her habit. Dryden's criticism has the
majesty of a queen; Rymer's has the ferocity of a tyrant.

[201] As he had studied with great
diligence the art of poetry, and enlarged or rectified his
notions by experience perpetually increasing, he had his mind
stored with principles and observations: he poured out his
knowledge with little labour; for of labour, notwithstanding the
multiplicity of his productions, there is sufficient reason to
suspect that he was not a lover. To write con amore,
with fondness for the employment, with perpetual touches and
retouches, with unwillingness to take leave of his own idea, and
an unwearied pursuit of unattainable perfection, was, I think, no
part of his character.

[202] His criticism may be considered
as general or occasional. In his general precepts, which depend
upon the nature of things and the structure of the human mind, he
may doubtless be safely recommended to the confidence of the
reader; but his occasional and particular positions were
sometimes interested, sometimes negligent, and sometimes
capricious. It is not without reason that Trapp, speaking of the
praises which he bestows on Palamon and Arcite,
says

[203] He is therefore by no means
constant to himself. His defence and desertion of dramatick rhyme
is generally known. Spence, in his remarks on Pope's
Odyssey, produces what he thinks an unconquerable
quotation from Dryden's preface to the Eneid, in
favour of translating an epick poem into blank verse; but he
forgets that when his author attempted the Iliad,
some years afterwards, he departed from his own decision, and
translated into rhyme.

[204] When he has any objection to
obviate, or any license to defend, he is not very scrupulous
about what he asserts, nor very cautious, if the present purpose
be served, not to entangle himself in his own sophistries. But
when all arts are exhausted, like other hunted animals, he
sometimes stands at bay; when he cannot disown the grossness of
one of his plays, he declares that he knows not any law that
prescribes morality to a comick poet.

[205] His remarks on ancient or
modern writers are not always to be trusted. His parallel of the
versification of Ovid with that of Claudian has been very justly
censured by Sewel. His comparison of the first line of Virgil
with the first of Statius is not happier. Virgil, he says, is
soft and gentle, and would have thought Statius mad if he had
heard him thundering out

'Quae superimposito moles geminata colosso.'

[206] Statius perhaps heats himself,
as he proceeds, to exaggerations somewhat hyperbolical; but
undoubtedly Virgil would have been too hasty if he had condemned
him to straw for one sounding line. Dryden wanted an instance,
and the first that occurred was imprest into the service.

[207] What he wishes to say, he says
at hazard; he cited Gorbuduc, which he had never
seen; gives a false account of Chapman's versification; and
discovers in the preface to his Fables that he
translated the first book of the Iliad without
knowing what was in the second.

[208] It will be difficult to prove
that Dryden ever made any great advances in literature. As having
distinguished himself at Westminster under the tuition of Busby,
who advanced his scholars to a height of knowledge very rarely
attained in grammar-schools, he resided afterwards at Cambridge,
it is not to be supposed that his skill in the ancient languages
was deficient compared with that of common students; but his
scholastick acquisitions seem not proportionate to his
opportunities and abilities. He could not, like Milton or Cowley,
have made his name illustrious merely by his learning. He
mentions but few books, and those such as lie in the beaten track
of regular study; from which, if ever he departs, he is in danger
of losing himself in unknown regions.

[209] In his Dialogue on the
Drama he pronounces with great confidence that the Latin
tragedy of Medea is not Ovid's, because it is not
sufficiently interesting and pathetick. He might have determined
the question upon surer evidence, for it is quoted by Quintilian
as the work of Seneca; and the only line which remains of Ovid's
play, for one line is left us, is not there to be found. There
was therefore no need of the gravity of conjecture, or the
discussion of plot or sentiment, to find what was already known
upon higher authority than such discussions can ever reach.

[210] His literature, though not
always free from ostentation, will be commonly found either
obvious, and made his own by the art of dressing it; or
superficial, which by what he gives shews what he wanted; or
erroneous, hastily collected, and negligently scattered.

[211] Yet it cannot be said that his
genius is ever unprovided of matter, or that his fancy languishes
in penury of ideas. His works abound with knowledge, and sparkle
with illustrations. There is scarcely any science or faculty that
does not supply him with occasional images and lucky similitudes;
every page discovers a mind very widely acquainted both with art
and nature, and in full possession of great stores of
intellectual wealth. Of him that knows much it is natural to
suppose that he has read with diligence; yet I rather believe
that the knowledge of Dryden was gleaned from accidental
intelligence and various conversation; by a quick apprehension, a
judicious selection, and a happy memory, a keen appetite of
knowledge, and a powerful digestion; by vigilance that permitted
nothing to pass without notice, and a habit of reflection that
suffered nothing useful to be lost. A mind like Dryden's, always
curious, always active, to which every understanding was proud to
be associated, and of which every one solicited the regard by an
ambitious display of himself, had a more pleasant, perhaps a
nearer, way to knowledge than by the silent progress of solitary
reading. I do not suppose that he despised books or intentionally
neglected them; but that he was carried out by the impetuosity of
his genius to more vivid and speedy instructors, and that his
studies were rather desultory and fortuitous than constant and
systematical.

[212] It must be confessed that he
scarcely ever appears to want book-learning but when he mentions
books; and to him may be transferred the praise which he gives
his master Charles:

'His conversation, wit, and parts, His knowledge in the
noblest useful arts, Were such, dead authors could not
give, But habitudes of those that [who] live; Who,
lighting him, did greater lights receive: He drain'd from
all, and all they knew, His apprehension quick, his judgement
true: That the most learn'd with shame confess His
knowledge more, his reading only less.'

[213] Of all this however if the
proof be demanded I will not undertake to give it; the atoms of
probability, of which my opinion has been formed, lie scattered
over all his works: and by him who thinks the question worth his
notice his works must be perused with very close attention.

[214] Criticism, either didactick or
defensive, occupies almost all his prose, except those pages
which he has devoted to his patrons; but none of his prefaces
were ever thought tedious. They have not the formality of a
settled style, in which the first half of the sentence betrays
the other. The clauses are never balanced, nor the periods
modelled; every word seems to drop by chance, though it falls
into its proper place. Nothing is cold or languid; the whole is
airy, animated, and vigorous: what is little is gay; what is
great is splendid. He may be thought to mention himself too
frequently; but while he forces himself upon our esteem, we
cannot refuse him to stand high in his own. Every thing is
excused by the play of images and the spriteliness of expression.
Though all is easy, nothing is feeble; though all seems careless,
there is nothing harsh; and though since his earlier works more
than a century has passed they have nothing yet uncouth or
obsolete.

[215] He who writes much will not
easily escape a manner, such a recurrence of particular modes as
may be easily noted. Dryden is always 'another and the same'; he
does not exhibit a second time the same elegances in the same
form, nor appears to have any art other than that of expressing
with clearness what he thinks with vigour. His style could not
easily be imitated, either seriously or ludicrously; for, being
always equable and always varied, it has no prominent or
discriminative characters. The beauty who is totally free from
disproportion of parts and features cannot be ridiculed by an
overcharged resemblance.

[216] From his prose however Dryden
derives only his accidental and secondary praise; the veneration
with which his name is pronounced by every cultivator of English
literature is paid to him as he refined the language, improved
the sentiments, and tuned the numbers of English Poetry.

[217] After about half a century of
forced thoughts and rugged metre some advances towards nature and
harmony had been already made by Waller and Denham; they had
shewn that long discourses in rhyme grew more pleasing when they
were broken into couplets, and that verse consisted not only in
the number but the arrangement of syllables.

[218] But though they did much, who
can deny that they left much to do? Their works were not many,
nor were their minds of very ample comprehension. More examples
of more modes of composition were necessary for the establishment
of regularity, and the introduction of propriety in word and
thought.

[219] Every language of a learned
nation necessarily divides itself into diction scholastick and
popular, grave and familiar, elegant and gross; and from a nice
distinction of these different parts arises a great part of the
beauty of style. But if we except a few minds, the favourites of
nature, to whom their own original rectitude was in the place of
rules, this delicacy of selection was little known to our
authors: our speech lay before them in a heap of confusion, and
every man took for every purpose what chance might offer him.

[220] There was therefore before the
time of Dryden no poetical diction: no system of words at once
refined from the grossness of domestick use and free from the
harshness of terms appropriated to particular arts. Words too
familiar or too remote defeat the purpose of a poet. From those
sounds which we hear on small or on coarse occasions, we do not
easily receive strong impressions or delightful images; and words
to which we are nearly strangers, whenever they occur, draw that
attention on themselves which they should transmit to things.

[221] Those happy combinations of
words which distinguish poetry from prose had been rarely
attempted; we had few elegances or flowers of speech: the roses
had not yet been plucked from the bramble or different colours
had not been joined to enliven one another.

[222] It may be doubted whether
Waller and Denham could have over-borne the prejudices which had
long prevailed, and which even then were sheltered by the
protection of Cowley. The new versification, as it was called,
may be considered as owing its establishment to Dryden; from
whose time it is apparent that English poetry has had no tendency
to relapse to its former savageness.

[223] The affluence and comprehension
of our language is very illustriously displayed in our poetical
translations of ancient writers: a work which the French seem to
relinquish in despair, and which we were long unable to perform
with dexterity. Ben Jonson thought it necessary to copy Horace
almost word by word; Feltham, his contemporary and adversary,
considers it as indispensably requisite in a translation to give
line for line. It is said that Sandys, whom Dryden calls the best
versifier of the last age, has struggled hard to comprise every
book of his English Metamorphoses in the same number
of verses with the original. Holyday had nothing in view but to
shew that he understood his author, with so little regard to the
grandeur of his diction, or the volubility of his numbers, that
his metres can hardly be called verses; they cannot be read
without reluctance, nor will the labour always be rewarded by
understanding them. Cowley saw that such 'copyers' were a
'servile race'; he asserted his liberty, and spread his wings so
boldly that he left his authors. It was reserved for Dryden to
fix the limits of poetical liberty, and give us just rules and
examples of translation.

[224] When languages are formed upon
different principles, it is impossible that the same modes of
expression should always be elegant in both. While they run on
together the closest translation may be considered as the best;
but when they divaricate each must take its natural course. Where
correspondence cannot be obtained it is necessary to be content
with something equivalent. 'Translation therefore,' says Dryden,
'is not so loose as paraphrase, nor so close as metaphrase.'

[225] All polished languages have
different styles: the concise, the diffuse, the lofty, and the
humble. In the proper choice of style consists the resemblance
which Dryden principally exacts from the translator. He is to
exhibit his author's thoughts in such a dress of diction as the
author would have given them, had his language been English:
rugged magnificence is not to be softened; hyperbolical
ostentation is not to be repressed, nor sententious affectation
to have its points blunted. A translator is to be like his
author: it is not his business to excel him.

[226] The reasonableness of these
rules seems sufficient for their vindication; and the effects
produced by observing them were so happy that I know not whether
they were ever opposed but by Sir Edward Sherburne, a man whose
learning was greater than his powers of poetry, and who, being
better qualified to give the meaning than the spirit of Seneca,
has introduced his version of three tragedies by a defence of
close translation. The authority of Horace, which the new
translators cited in defence of their practice, he has, by a
judicious explanation, taken fairly from them; but reason wants
not Horace to support it.

[227] It seldom happens that all the
necessary causes concur to any great effect: will is wanting to
power, or power to will, or both are impeded by external
obstructions. The exigences in which Dryden was condemned to pass
his life are reasonably supposed to have blasted his genius, to
have driven out his works in a state of immaturity, and to have
intercepted the full-blown elegance which longer growth would
have supplied.

[228] Poverty, like other rigid
powers, is sometimes too hastily accused. If the excellence of
Dryden's works was lessened by his indigence, their number was
increased; and I know not how it will be proved that if he had
written less he would have written better; or that indeed he
would have undergone the toil of an author, if he had not been
solicited by something more pressing than the love of praise.

[229] But as is said by his
Sebastian,

'What had been, is unknown; what is, appears.'

We know that Dryden's several productions were so many
successive expedients for his support: his plays were therefore
often borrowed, and his poems were almost all occasional.

[230] In an occasional performance no
height of excellence can be expected from any mind, however
fertile in itself, and however stored with acquisitions. He whose
work is general and arbitrary has the choice of his matter, and
takes that which his inclination and his studies have best
qualified him to display and decorate. He is at liberty to delay
his publication, till he has satisfied his friends and himself;
till he has reformed his first thoughts by subsequent
examination, and polished away those faults which the
precipitance of ardent composition is likely to leave behind it.
Virgil is related to have poured out a great number of lines in
the morning, and to have passed the day in reducing them to
fewer.

[231] The occasional poet is
circumscribed by the narrowness of his subject: whatever can
happen to man has happened so often that little remains for fancy
or invention. We have been all born; we have most of us been
married; and so many have died before us that our deaths can
supply but few materials for a poet. In the fate of princes the
publick has an interest; and what happens to them of good or evil
the poets have always considered as business for the Muse. But
after so many inauguratory gratulations, nuptial hymns, and
funeral dirges, he must be highly favoured by nature or by
fortune who says any thing not said before. Even war and
conquest, however splendid, suggest no new images; the triumphal
chariot of a victorious monarch can be decked only with those
ornaments that have graced his predecessors.

[232] Not only matter but time is
wanting. The poem must not be delayed till the occasion is
forgotten. The lucky moments of animated imagination cannot be
attended; elegances and illustrations cannot be multiplied by
gradual accumulation: the composition must be dispatched while
conversation is yet busy and admiration fresh; and haste is to be
made lest some other event should lay hold upon mankind.

[233] Occasional compositions may
however secure to a writer the praise both of learning and
facility; for they cannot be the effect of long study, and must
be furnished immediately from the treasures of the mind.

[234] The death of Cromwell was the
first publick event which called forth Dryden's poetical powers.
His heroick stanzas have beauties and defects; the thoughts are
vigorous, and though not always proper shew a mind replete with
ideas; the numbers are smooth, and the diction, if not altogether
correct, is elegant and easy.

[235] Davenant was perhaps at this
time his favourite author, though Gondibert never
appears to have been popular; and from Davenant he learned to
please his ear with the stanza of four lines alternately
rhymed.

[236] Dryden very early formed his
versification: there are in this early production no traces of
Donne's or Jonson's ruggedness; but he did not so soon free his
mind from the ambition of forced conceits. In his verses on the
Restoration he says of the King's exile:

'He, toss'd by Fate. . . Could taste no sweets
of youth's desired age, But found his life too true a
pilgrimage.'

And afterwards, to shew how virtue and wisdom are increased by
adversity, he makes this remark:

'Well might the ancient poets then confer On Night the
honour'd name of counsellor, Since, struck with rays
of prosperous fortune blind, We light alone in dark
afflictions find.'

[237] His praise of Monk's dexterity
comprises such a cluster of thoughts unallied to one another as
will not elsewhere be easily found:

''Twas Monk, whom providence design'd to loose Those real
bonds false freedom did impose. The blessed saints that
watch'd this turning scene Did from their stars with joyful
wonder lean To see small clues draw vastest weights
along, Not in their bulk, but in their order strong. Thus
pencils can by one slight touch restore Smiles to that
changed face that wept before. With ease such fond chimaeras
we pursue, As fancy frames for fancy to subdue: But, when
ourselves to action we betake, It shuns the mint, like gold
that chymists make: How hard was then his task, at once to
be What in the body natural we see! Man's Architect
distinctly did ordain The charge of muscles, nerves, and of
the brain, Through viewless conduits spirits to dispense,
The springs of motion from the seat of sense. 'Twas not the
hasty product of a day, But the well-ripen'd fruit of wise
delay. He, like a patient angler, ere he strook, Would
let them play a-while upon the hook. Our healthful food the
stomach labours thus, At first embracing what it straight
doth crush. Wise leaches will not vain receipts obtrude,
While growing pains pronounce the humours crude; Deaf to
complaints, they wait upon the ill, Till some safe crisis
authorize their skill.'

[238] He had not yet learned, indeed
he never learned well, to forbear the improper use of mythology.
After having rewarded the heathen deities for their care,

'With alga who the sacred altar strows? To all
the sea-gods Charles an offering owes; A bull to thee,
Portunus, shall be slain, A ram [lamb] to you, ye [the]
Tempests of the Main' —

he tells us, in the language of religion,

'Prayer storm'd the skies, and ravish'd Charles from
thence, As heaven itself is took by
violence' —

and afterwards mentions one of the most awful passages of
Sacred History.

[239] How far he was yet from
thinking it necessary to found his sentiments on Nature appears
from the extravagance of his fictions and hyperboles:

'The winds, that never moderation knew, Afraid to blow too
much, too faintly blew; Or, out of breath with joy, could not
enlarge Their straiten'd lung ??? 'It is no longer motion
cheats your view; As you meet it, the land approacheth
you; The land returns, and in the white it wears The
marks of penitence and sorrow bears.'

I know not whether this fancy, however little be its value,
was not borrowed. A French poet read to Malherbe some verses, in
which he represents France as moving out of its place to receive
the king. 'Though this,' said Malherbe, 'was in my time, I do not
remember it.'

[240] His poem on the
Coronation has a more even tenour of thought. Some
lines deserve to be quoted:

'You have already quench'd sedition's brand, And zeal,
that [which] burnt it, only warms the land; The jealous sects
that durst [dare] not trust their cause So far from their own
will as to the laws, Him [You] for their umpire and their
synod take, And their appeal alone to Caesar make.'

[241] Here may be found one particle
of that old versification, of which, I believe, in all his works
there is not another:

'Nor is it duty, or our hope [hopes] alone, Creates
[Create] that joy, but full fruition.'

[242] In the verses to the lord
chancellor Clarendon two years afterwards is a conceit so
hopeless at the first view that few would have attempted it, and
so successfully laboured that though at last it gives the reader
more perplexity than pleasure, and seems hardly worth the study
that it costs, yet it must be valued as a proof of a mind at once
subtle and comprehensive:

'In open prospect nothing bounds our eye, Until the earth
seems join'd unto the sky: So in this hemisphere our outmost
view Is only bounded by our king and you: Our sight is
limited where you are join'd, And beyond that no farther
heaven can find. So well your virtues do with his agree,
That, though your orbs of different greatness be, Yet both
are for each other's use dispos'd, His to enclose, and yours
to be enclos'd: Nor could another in your room have been,
Except an emptiness had come between.'

[243] The comparison of the
Chancellor to the Indies leaves all resemblance too far behind
it:

'And as the Indies were not found before Those rich
perfumes which from the happy shore The winds upon their
balmy wings convey'd, Whose guilty sweetness first their
world betray'd; So by your counsels we are brought to
view A new and undiscover'd world in you.'

[244] There is another comparison,
for there is little else in the poem, of which, though perhaps it
cannot be explained into plain prosaick meaning, the mind
perceives enough to be delighted, and readily forgives its
obscurity for its magnificence:

'How strangely active are the arts of peace, Whose
restless motions less than wars do cease! Peace is not freed
from labour, but from noise, And war more force, but not more
pains employs: Such is the mighty swiftness of your mind
That, like the earth's, it leaves our sense behind, While you
so smoothly turn and rowl our sphere, That rapid motion does
but rest appear. For as in nature's swiftness, with the
throng Of flying orbs while ours is borne along, All
seems at rest to the deluded eye, Mov'd by the soul of the
same harmony: So carry'd on by your unweary'd care, We
rest in peace, and yet in motion share.'

[245] To this succeed four lines,
which perhaps afford Dryden's first attempt at those penetrating
remarks on human nature, for which he seems to have been
peculiarly formed:

'Let envy then those crimes within you see, From which the
happy never must be free; Envy that does with misery
reside, The joy and the revenge of ruin'd pride.'

[246] Into this poem he seems to have
collected all his powers, and after this he did not often bring
upon his anvil such stubborn and unmalleable thoughts; but, as a
specimen of his abilities to unite the most unsociable matter, he
has concluded with lines, of which I think not myself obliged to
tell the meaning:

'Yet, unimpair'd with labours, or with time, Your age but
seems to a new youth to climb. Thus heavenly bodies do our
time beget, And measure change, but share no part of it:
And still it shall without a weight increase, Like this new
year, whose motions never cease. For since the glorious
course you have begun Is led by Charles, as that is by the
sun, It must both weightless and immortal prove, Because
the centre of it is above.'

[247] In the Annus
Mirabilis he returned to the quatrain, which from that
time he totally quitted, perhaps from this experience of its
inconvenience, for he complains of its difficulty. This is one of
his greatest attempts. He had subjects equal to his abilities, a
great naval war, and the Fire of London. Battles have always been
described in heroick poetry; but a sea-fight and artillery had
yet something of novelty. New arts are long in the world before
poets describe them; for they borrow every thing from their
predecessors, and commonly derive very little from nature or from
life. Boileau was the first French writer that had ever hazarded
in verse the mention of modern war, or the effects of gunpowder.
We, who are less afraid of novelty, had already possession of
those dreadful images: Waller had described a seafight. Milton
had not yet transferred the invention of fire-arms to the
rebellious angels.

[248] This poem is written with great
diligence, yet does not fully answer the expectation raised by
such subjects and such a writer. With the stanza of Davenant he
has sometimes his vein of parenthesis and incidental
disquisition, and stops his narrative for a wise remark.

[249] The general fault is that he
affords more sentiment than description, and does not so much
impress scenes upon the fancy as deduce consequences and make
comparisons.

[250] The initial stanzas have rather
too much resemblance to the first lines of Waller's poem on the
war with Spain; perhaps such a beginning is natural, and could
not be avoided without affectation. Both Waller and Dryden might
take their hint from the poem on the civil war of Rome, 'Orbem
jam totum,' &c.

[251] Of the king collecting his
navy, he says:

'It seems as every ship their sovereign knows, His awful
summons they so soon obey; So hear the scaly herds when
Proteus blows, And so to pasture follow through the sea.'

It would not be hard to believe that Dryden had written the
two first lines seriously, and that some wag had added the two
latter in burlesque. Who would expect the lines that immediately
follow, which are indeed perhaps indecently hyperbolical, but
certainly in a mode totally different?

'To see this fleet upon the ocean move, Angels drew wide
the curtains of the skies; And heaven, as if there wanted
lights above, For tapers made two glaring comets rise.'

[252] The description of the attempt
at Bergen will afford a very compleat specimen of the
descriptions in this poem:

'And now approach'd their fleet from India, fraught With
all the riches of the rising sun: And precious sand from
southern climates brought, The fatal regions where the war
begun.

'Like hunted castors, conscious of their store, Their
way-laid wealth to Norway's coast they bring: Then first the
North's cold bosom spices bore, And winter brooded on the
eastern spring.

'By the rich scent we found our perfum'd prey, Which,
flank'd with rocks, did close in covert lie: And round about
their murdering cannon lay, At once to threaten and invite
the eye.

'Fiercer than cannon, and than rocks more hard, The
English undertake th' unequal war: Seven ships alone, by
which the port is barr'd, Besiege the Indies, and all Denmark
dare.

'These fight like husbands, but like lovers those: These
fain would keep, and those more fain enjoy: And to such
height their frantic passion grows, That what both love, both
hazard to destroy:

'Amidst whole heaps of spices lights a ball, And now their
odours arm'd against them fly: Some preciously by shatter'd
porcelain fall, And some by aromatic splinters die.

'And though by tempests of the prize bereft, In heaven's
inclemency some ease we find; Our foes we vanquish'd by our
valour left, And only yielded to the seas and wind.'

[253] In this manner is the sublime
too often mingled with the ridiculous. The Dutch seek a shelter
for a wealthy fleet: this surely needed no illustration; yet they
must fly, not like all the rest of mankind on the same occasion,
but 'like hunted castors'; and they might with strict propriety
be hunted, for we winded them by our noses — their
'perfumes' betrayed them. The 'Husband' and the 'Lover,' though
of more dignity than the 'Castor,' are images too domestick to
mingle properly with the horrors of war. The two quatrains that
follow are worthy of the author.

[254] The account of the different
sensations with which the two fleets retired when the night
parted them is one of the fairest flowers of English poetry:

'The night comes on, we eager to pursue The combat still,
and they asham'd to leave: 'Till the last streaks of dying
day withdrew, And doubtful moon-light did our rage
deceive.

'In th' English fleet each ship resounds with joy, And
loud applause of their great leader's fame; In fiery dreams
the Dutch they still destroy, And, slumbering, smile at the
imagin'd flame.

'Not so the Holland fleet, who, tir'd and done, Stretch'd
on their decks like weary oxen lie; Faint sweats all down
their mighty members run (Vast bulks, which little souls but
ill supply).

'In dreams they fearful precipices tread, Or, shipwreck'd,
labour to some distant shore, Or, in dark churches, walk
among the dead: They wake with horror, and dare sleep no
more.'

[255] It is a general rule in poetry
that all appropriated terms of art should be sunk in general
expressions, because poetry is to speak an universal language.
This rule is still stronger with regard to arts not liberal or
confined to few, and therefore far removed from common knowledge;
and of this kind certainly is technical navigation. Yet Dryden
was of opinion that a sea-fight ought to be described in the
nautical language; 'and certainly,' says he, 'as those who in a
logical disputation [dispute] keep to [in] general terms would
hide a fallacy, so those who do it in any poetical description
would veil their ignorance.'

[256] Let us then appeal to
experience; for by experience at last we learn as well what will
please as what will profit. In the battle his terms seem to have
been blown away; but he deals them liberally in the dock:

'So here some pick out bullets from the side, Some drive
old okum thro' each seam and rift: Their
left-hand does the calking-iron guide, The rattling
mallet with the right they lift.

'With boiling pitch another near at hand (From friendly
Sweden brought) the seams instops: Which, well laid
[paid] o'er, the salt-sea waves withstand, And shake them
from the rising beak in drops.

'Some the gall'd ropes with dawby marling
bind, Or sear-cloth masts with strong tarpawling
coats: To try new shrouds one mounts into the
wind, And one below, their ease or stiffness notes.'

I suppose here is not one term which every reader does not
wish away.

[257] His digression to the original
and progress of navigation, with his prospect of the advancement
which it shall receive from the Royal Society, then newly
instituted, may be considered as an example seldom equalled of
seasonable excursion and artful return.

[258] One line, however, leaves me
discontented; he says, that by the help of the philosophers,

'Instructed ships shall sail to quick commerce, By which
remotest regions are allied.'

Which he is constrained to explain in a note, 'By a more exact
measure of longitude.' It had better become Dryden's learning and
genius to have laboured science into poetry, and have shewn, by
explaining longitude, that verse did not refuse the ideas of
philosophy.

[259] His description of the Fire is
painted by resolute meditation, out of a mind better formed to
reason than to feel. The conflagration of a city, with all its
tumults of concomitant distress, is one of the most dreadful
spectacles which this world can offer to human eyes; yet it seems
to raise little emotion in the breast of the poet: he watches the
flame coolly from street to street, with now a reflection and now
a simile, till at last he meets the king, for whom he makes a
speech, rather tedious in a time so busy, and then follows again
the progress of the fire.

[260] There are, however, in this
part some passages that deserve attention, as in the
beginning:

'The diligence of trades, and noiseful gain, And luxury,
more late asleep were laid; All was the night's, and in her
silent reign No sound the rest of Nature did invade.

'In this deep quiet —'

The expression 'All was the night's' is taken from Seneca, who
remarks on Virgil's line

'Omnia noctis erant placida composta quiete,'

that he might have concluded better,

'Omnia noctis erant.'

[261] The following quatrain is
vigorous and animated:

'The ghosts of traytors from the bridge descend With bold
fanatick spectres to rejoice; About the fire into a dance
they bend, And sing their sabbath notes with feeble
voice.'

[262] His prediction of the
improvements which shall be made in the new city is elegant and
poetical, and, with an event which Poets cannot always boast, has
been happily verified. The poem concludes with a simile that
might have better been omitted.

[263] Dryden, when he wrote this
poem, seems not yet fully to have formed his versification, or
settled his system of propriety.

[264] From this time he addicted
himself almost wholly to the stage, 'to which,' says he, 'my
genius never much inclined me,' merely as the most profitable
market for poetry. By writing tragedies in rhyme he continued to
improve his diction and his numbers. According to the opinion of
Harte, who had studied his works with great attention, he settled
his principles of versification in 1676, when he produced the
play of Aureng Zebe; and, according to his own
account of the short time in which he wrote
Tyrannick Love and The State of
Innocence, he soon obtained the full effect of diligence,
and added facility to exactness.

[265] Rhyme has been so long banished
from the theatre that we know not its effect upon the passions of
an audience; but it has this convenience, that sentences stand
more independent on each other, and striking passages are
therefore easily selected and retained. Thus the description of
Night in The Indian Emperor and the rise and fall of
empire in The Conquest of Granada are more
frequently repeated than any lines in All for Love
or Don Sebastian.

[266] To search his plays for
vigorous sallies and sententious elegances, or to fix the dates
of any little pieces which he wrote by chance or by solicitation,
were labour too tedious and minute.

[267] His dramatic labours did not so
wholly absorb his thoughts, but that he promulgated the laws of
translation in a preface to the English Epistles of
Ovid; one of which he translated himself, and another in
conjunction with the Earl of Mulgrave.

[268]Absalom and
Achitophel is a work so well known that particular
criticism is superfluous. If it be considered as a poem political
and controversial it will be found to comprise all the
excellences of which the subject is susceptible: acrimony of
censure, elegance of praise, artful delineation of characters,
variety and vigour of sentiment, happy turns of language, and
pleasing harmony of numbers; and all these raised to such a
height as can scarcely be found in any other English
composition.

[269] It is not however without
faults; some lines are inelegant or improper, and too many are
irreligiously licentious. The original structure of the poem was
defective: allegories drawn to great length will always break;
Charles could not run continually parallel with David.

[270] The subject had likewise
another inconvenience: it admitted little imagery or description,
and a long poem of mere sentiments easily becomes tedious; though
all the parts are forcible and every line kindles new rapture,
the reader, if not relieved by the interposition of something
that sooths the fancy, grows weary of admiration, and defers the
rest.

[271] As an approach to historical
truth was necessary the action and catastrophe were not in the
poet's power; there is therefore an unpleasing disproportion
between the beginning and the end. We are alarmed by a faction
formed out of many sects various in their principles, but
agreeing in their purpose of mischief, formidable for their
numbers, and strong by their supports, while the king's friends
are few and weak. The chiefs on either part are set forth to
view; but when expectation is at the height the king makes a
speech, and

'Henceforth a series of new times [time] began.'

[272] Who can forbear to think of an
enchanted castle, with a wide moat and lofty battlements, walls
of marble and gates of brass, which vanishes at once into air
when the destined knight blows his horn before it?

[273] In the second part, written by
Tate, there is a long insertion, which for poignancy of satire
exceeds any part of the former. Personal resentment, though no
laudable motive to satire, can add great force to general
principles. Self-love is a busy prompter.

[274]The Medal, written
upon the same principles with Absalom and
Achitophel, but upon a narrower plan, gives less pleasure,
though it discovers equal abilities in the writer. The
superstructure cannot extend beyond the foundation; a single
character or incident cannot furnish as many ideas as a series of
events or multiplicity of agents. This poem therefore, since time
has left it to itself, is not much read, nor perhaps generally
understood, yet it abounds with touches both of humorous and
serious satire. The picture of a man whose propensions to
mischief are such that his best actions are but inability of
wickedness, is very skilfully delineated and strongly
coloured.

'Power was his aim: but, thrown from that pretence, The
wretch turn'd loyal in his own defence, And malice reconcil'd
him to his Prince. Him, in the anguish of his soul, he
serv'd; Rewarded faster still than he deserv'd. Behold
him now exalted into trust; His counsels oft convenient,
seldom just. Ev'n in the most sincere advice he gave, He
had a grudging still to be a knave. The frauds he learnt in
his fanatic years Made him uneasy in his lawful gears. At
least [best] as little honest as he cou'd: And, like white
witches, mischievously good. To his first bias, longingly, he
leans; And rather would be great by wicked means.'

[275] The Threnodia,
which, by a term I am afraid neither authorized nor analogical,
he calls Augustalis, is not among his happiest
productions. Its first and obvious defect is the irregularity of
its metre, to which the ears of that age however were accustomed.
What is worse, it has neither tenderness nor dignity, it is
neither magnificent nor pathetick. He seems to look round him for
images which he cannot find, and what he has he distorts by
endeavouring to enlarge them. He is, he says, 'petrified with
grief'; but the marble sometimes relents, and trickles in a
joke.

'The sons of art all med'cines try'd, And ev ??? With
emulation each essay'd His utmost skill; nay more they
pray'd: Was never [Never was] losing game with better
conduct play'd.'

[276] He had been a little inclined
to merriment before upon the prayers of a nation for their dying
sovereign, nor was he serious enough to keep heathen fables out
of his religion.

'With him th' innumerable crowd Of armed prayers
Knock'd at the gates of heaven, and knock'd aloud;The
first well-meaning rude petitioners. All for his life
assail'd the throne, All would have brib'd the skies by
offering up their own. So great a throng not heaven itself
could bar; 'Twas almost borne by force as in the giants'
war. The prayers, at least, for his reprieve were
heard; His death, like Hezekiah's, was deferr'd.'

[277] There is throughout the
composition a desire of splendor without wealth. In the
conclusion he seems too much pleased with the prospect of the new
reign to have lamented his old master with much sincerity.

[278] He did not miscarry in this
attempt for want of skill either in lyrick or elegiack poetry.
His poem On the death of Mrs. Killigrew is
undoubtedly the noblest ode that our language ever has produced.
The first part flows with a torrent of enthusiasm. 'Fervet
immensusque ruit.' All the stanzas indeed are not equal. An
imperial crown cannot be one continued diamond: the gems must be
held together by some less valuable matter.

[279] In his first Ode for
Cecilia's Day, which is lost in the splendor of the
second, there are passages which would have dignified any other
poet. The first stanza is vigorous and elegant, though the word
diapason is too technical, and the rhymes are too remote
from one another.

'From harmony, from heavenly harmony, This universal frame
began: When nature underneath a heap Of jarring atoms
lay, And could not heave her head, The tuneful voice was
heard from high, Arise ye more than dead. Then cold and
hot, and moist and dry, In order to their stations leap,
And musick's power obey. From harmony, from heavenly
harmony, This universal frame began: From harmony to
harmony Through all the compass of the notes it ran, The
diapason closing full in man.'

[280] The conclusion is likewise
striking, but it includes an image so awful in itself that it can
owe little to poetry; and I could wish the antithesis of
musick untuning had found some other place.

'As from the power of sacred lays The spheres began to
move, And sung the great Creator's praise To all the
bless'd above; So when the last and dreadful hour This
crumbling pageant shall devour, The trumpet shall be heard on
high, The dead shall live, the living die, And musick
shall untune the sky.'

[281] Of his skill in Elegy he has
given a specimen in his Eleonora, of which the
following lines discover their author:

'Though all these rare endowments of the mind Were in a
narrow space of life confin'd, The figure was with full
perfection crown'd; Though not so large an orb, as truly
round. As when in glory, through the public place, The
spoils of conquer'd nations were to pass, And but one day for
triumph was allow'd, The consul was constrain'd his pomp to
crowd; And so the swift procession hurry'd on, That all,
though not distinctly, might be shown: So, in the straiten'd
bounds of life confin'd, She gave but glimpses of her
glorious mind: And multitudes of virtues pass'd along,
Each pressing foremost in the mighty throng, Ambitious to be
seen, and then make room For greater multitudes that were to
come. Yet unemploy'd no minute slipp'd away; Moments were
precious in so short a stay. The haste of heaven to have her
was so great, That some were single acts, though each
compleat; And every act stood ready to repeat.'

[282] This piece however is not
without its faults; there is so much likeness in the initial
comparison that there is no illustration. As a king would be
lamented, Eleonora was lamented.

'As when some great and gracious monarch dies, Soft
whispers first and mournful murmurs rise Among the sad
attendants; then the sound Soon gathers voice, and spreads
the news around, Through town and country, till the dreadful
blast Is blown to distant colonies at last; Who then,
perhaps, were offering vows in vain, For his long life and
for his happy reign: So slowly by degrees, unwilling fame
Did matchless Eleonora's fate proclaim, Till publick as the
loss the news became.'

This is little better than to say in praise of a shrub that it
is as green as a tree, or of a brook, that it waters a garden as
a river waters a country.

[283] Dryden confesses that he did
not know the lady whom he celebrates; the praise being therefore
inevitably general fixes no impression on the reader nor excites
any tendency to love, nor much desire of imitation. Knowledge of
the subject is to the poet what durable materials are to the
architect.

[284] The Religio Laici,
which borrows its title from the Religio Medici of
Browne, is almost the only work of Dryden which can be considered
as a voluntary effusion; in this, therefore, it might be hoped
that the full effulgence of his genius would be found. But
unhappily the subject is rather argumentative than poetical: he
intended only a specimen of metrical disputation.

'And this unpolish'd rugged verse I chose, As fittest for
discourse, and nearest prose.'

[285] This however is a composition
of great excellence in its kind, in which the familiar is very
properly diversified with the solemn, and the grave with the
humorous; in which metre has neither weakened the force nor
clouded the perspicuity of argument: nor will it be easy to find
another example equally happy of this middle kind of writing,
which, though prosaick in some parts, rises to high poetry in
others, and neither towers to the skies nor creeps along the
ground.

[286] Of the same kind, or not far
distant from it, is The Hind and Panther, the
longest of all Dryden's original poems; an allegory intended to
comprise and to decide the controversy between the Romanists and
Protestants. The scheme of the work is injudicious and
incommodious: for what can be more absurd than that one beast
should counsel another to rest her faith upon a pope and council?
He seems well enough skilled in the usual topicks of argument,
endeavours to shew the necessity of an infallible judge, and
reproaches the Reformers with want of unity; but is weak enough
to ask, why since we see without knowing how, we may not have an
infallible judge without knowing where.

[287] The Hind at one time is afraid
to drink at the common brook, because she may be worried; but
walking home with the Panther talks by the way of the Nicene
Fathers, and at last declares herself to be the Catholic
Church.

[288] This absurdity was very
properly ridiculed in The City Mouse and Country
Mouse of Montague and Prior; and in the detection and
censure of the incongruity of the fiction chiefly consists the
value of their performance, which, whatever reputation it might
obtain by the help of temporary passions, seems to readers almost
a century distant not very forcible or animated.

[289] Pope, whose judgement was
perhaps a little bribed by the subject, used to mention this poem
as the most correct specimen of Dryden's versification. It was
indeed written when he had completely formed his manner, and may
be supposed to exhibit, negligence excepted, his deliberate and
ultimate scheme of metre.

[290] We may therefore reasonably
infer that he did not approve the perpetual uniformity which
confines the sense to couplets, since he has broken his lines in
the initial paragraph:

A milk-white Hind, immortal and unchang'd, Fed on the
lawns, and in the forest rang'd; Without unspotted, innocent
within, She fear'd no danger, for she knew no sin. Yet
had she oft been chac'd with horns and hounds And Scythian
shafts, and many winged wounds Aim'd at her heart; was often
forc'd to fly, And doom'd to death, though fated not to
die.'

[291] These lines are lofty, elegant,
and musical, notwithstanding the interruption of the pause, of
which the effect is rather increase of pleasure by variety than
offence by ruggedness.

[292] To the first part it was his
intention, he says, 'to give the majestick turn of heroick
poesy'; and perhaps he might have executed his design not
unsuccessfully had not an opportunity of satire, which he cannot
forbear, fallen sometimes in his way. The character of a
Presbyterian, whose emblem is the Wolf, is not very heroically
majestick:

'More haughty than the rest, the wolfish race Appear with
belly gaunt and famish'd face: Never was so deform'd a beast
of grace. His ragged tail betwixt his legs he wears,
Close clapp'd for shame; but his rough crest he rears, And
pricks up his predestinating ears.'

[293] His general character of the
other sorts of beasts that never go to church, though spritely
and keen, has however not much of heroick poesy.

'These are the chief; to number o'er the rest, And stand
like Adam naming every beast, Were weary work; nor will the
Muse describe A slimy-born and sun-begotten tribe, Who,
far from steeples and their sacred sound, In fields their
sullen conventicles found. These gross, half-animated lumps I
leave; Nor can I think what thoughts they can conceive.
But if they think at all, 'tis sure no higher Than matter,
put in motion, may aspire; Souls that can scarce ferment
their mass of clay; So drossy, so divisible are they, As
would but serve pure bodies for allay: Such souls as shards
produce, such beetle things As only buz to heaven with
evening wings, Strike in the dark, offending but by
chance; Such are the blindfold blows of ignorance. They
know not beings, and but hate a name; To them the Hind and
Panther are the same.'

[294] One more instance, and that
taken from the narrative part, where style was more in his
choice, will shew how steadily he kept his resolution of heroick
dignity.

'For when the herd, suffic'd, did late repair To ferny
heaths, and to their forest lair, She made a mannerly excuse
to stay, Proffering the Hind to wait her half the way:
That, since the sky was clear, an hour of talk Might help her
to beguile the tedious walk. With much good-will the motion
was embrac'd, To chat awhile on their adventures past:
Nor had the grateful Hind so soon forgot Her friend and
fellow-sufferer in the Plot. Yet wondering how of late she
grew estrang'd, Her forehead cloudy and her count'nance
chang'd, She thought this hour th' occasion would present
To learn her secret cause of discontent, Which well she
hop'd, might be with ease redress'd, Considering her a
well-bred civil beast, And more a gentlewoman than the
rest. After some common talk what rumours ran, The lady
of the spotted muff began.'

[295] The second and third parts he
professes to have reduced to diction more familiar and more
suitable to dispute and conversation; the difference is not,
however, very easily perceived: the first has familiar, and the
two others have sonorous, lines. The original incongruity runs
through the whole: the king is now Caesar, and now the Lyon; and
the name Pan is given to the Supreme Being.

[296] But when this constitutional
absurdity is forgiven the poem must be confessed to be written
with great smoothness of metre, a wide extent of knowledge, and
an abundant multiplicity of images; the controversy is
embellished with pointed sentences, diversified by illustrations,
and enlivened by sallies of invective. Some of the facts to which
allusions are made are now become obscure, and perhaps there may
be many satirical passages little understood.

[297] As it was by its nature a work
of defiance, a composition which would naturally be examined with
the utmost acrimony of criticism, it was probably laboured with
uncommon attention; and there are, indeed, few negligences in the
subordinate parts. The original impropriety and the subsequent
unpopularity of the subject, added to the ridiculousness of its
first elements, has sunk it into neglect; but it may be usefully
studied as an example of poetical ratiocination, in which the
argument suffers little from the metre.

[298] In the poem on The Birth
of the Prince of Wales nothing is very remarkable but the
exorbitant adulation, and that insensibility of the precipice on
which the king was then standing, which the laureate apparently
shared with the rest of the courtiers. A few months cured him of
controversy, dismissed him from court, and made him again a
play-wright and translator.

[299] Of Juvenal there had been a
translation by Stapylton, and another by Holiday; neither of them
is very poetical. Stapylton is more smooth, and Holiday's is more
esteemed for the learning of his notes. A new version was
proposed to the poets of that time, and undertaken by them in
conjunction. The main design was conducted by Dryden, whose
reputation was such that no man was unwilling to serve the Muses
under him.

[300] The general character of this
translation will be given when it is said to preserve the wit,
but to want the dignity of the original. The peculiarity of
Juvenal is a mixture of gaiety and stateliness, of pointed
sentences, and declamatory grandeur. His points have not been
neglected; but his grandeur none of the band seemed to consider
as necessary to be imitated, except Creech, who undertook the
thirteenth Satire. It is therefore perhaps possible
to give a better representation of that great satirist, even in
those parts which Dryden himself has translated, some passages
excepted, which will never be excelled.

[301] With Juvenal was published
Persius, translated wholly by Dryden. This work, though like all
the other productions of Dryden it may have shining parts, seems
to have been written merely for wages, in an uniform mediocrity,
without any eager endeavour after excellence or laborious effort
of the mind.

[302] There wanders an opinion among
the readers of poetry that one of these satires is an exercise of
the school. Dryden says that he once translated it at school; but
not that he preserved or published the juvenile performance.

[303] Not long afterwards he
undertook perhaps the most arduous work of its kind, a
translation of Virgil, for which he had shewn how well he was
qualified by his version of the Pollio, and two
episodes, one of Nisus and Euryalus, the other of Mezentius and
Lausus.

[304] In the comparison of Homer and
Virgil the discriminative excellence of Homer is elevation and
comprehension of thought, and that of Virgil is grace and
splendor of diction. The beauties of Homer are therefore
difficult to be lost, and those of Virgil difficult to be
retained. The massy trunk of sentiment is safe by its solidity,
but the blossoms of elocution easily drop away. The author,
having the choice of his own images, selects those which he can
best adorn; the translator must at all hazards follow his
original, and express thoughts which perhaps he would not have
chosen. When to this primary difficulty is added the
inconvenience of a language so much inferior in harmony to the
Latin, it cannot be expected that they who read the
Georgick and the Eneid should be much
delighted with any version.

[305] All these obstacles Dryden saw,
and all these he determined to encounter. The expectation of his
work was undoubtedly great; the nation considered its honour as
interested in the event. One gave him the different editions of
his author, and another helped him in the subordinate parts. The
arguments of the several books were given him by Addison.

[306] The hopes of the publick were
not disappointed. He produced, says Pope, 'the most noble and
spirited translation that I know in any language.' It certainly
excelled whatever had appeared in English, and appears to have
satisfied his friends, and, for the most part, to have silenced
his enemies. Milbourne, indeed, a clergyman, attacked it; but his
outrages seem to be the ebullitions of a mind agitated by
stronger resentment than bad poetry can excite, and previously
resolved not to be pleased.

[307] His criticism extends only to
the Preface, Pastorals, and Georgicks;
and, as he professes, to give his antagonist an opportunity of
reprisal he has added his own version of the first and fourth
Pastorals, and the first Georgick. The
world has forgotten his book; but since his attempt has given him
a place in literary history, I will preserve a specimen of his
criticism by inserting his remarks on the invocation before the
first Georgick, and of his poetry, by annexing his
own version.

'Ver. 1. "What makes a plenteous harvest, when to turn The
fruitful soil, and when to sow the corn."

It's unlucky, they say, "to stumble at the threshold," but
what has a "plenteous harvest" to do here? Virgil would not
pretend to prescribe rules for that which
depends not on the husbandman's care, but the
disposition of Heaven
altogether. Indeed, the plenteous crop depends somewhat
on the good method of tillage, and where the
land's ill manur'd the corn without a miracle
can be but indifferent; but the harvest may be
good, which is its properest epithet, tho' the
husbandman's skill were never so indifferent.
The next sentence is too literal, and when
to plough had been Virgil's meaning, and intelligible to
every body; "and when to sow the corn" is a needless
addition.

'Ver. 3. "The care of sheep, of oxen, and of kine; And
when to geld the lambs, and sheer the swine"

would as well have fallen under the "cura boum, qui cultus
habendo sit pecori," as Mr. D.'s deduction of
particulars.

'Ver. 5. "The birth and genius of the frugal bee I sing,
Maecenas, and I sing to thee." —

But where did experientia ever signify birth and
genius? or what ground was there for such a figure
in this place? How much more manly is Mr. Ogylby's version!

"What makes rich grounds, in what celestial signs, 'Tis
good to plough, and marry elms with vines. What best fits
cattle, what with sheep agrees, And several arts improving
frugal bees, I sing, Maecenas."

'Which four lines, tho' faulty enough, are yet much more to
the purpose than Mr. D.'s six.

'Ver. 22. "From fields and mountains to my song repair."

For patrium linquens nemus, saltusque Lyc£???i
— Very well explained!'

Written as if these had been Pallas's invention.
The ploughman's toil's impertinent.

'Ver. 25. "— The shroud-like
cypress" —

Why "shroud-like?" Is a cypress pulled up by the
roots, which the sculpture in the last
Eclogue fills Silvanus's hand with, so very like a
shroud? Or did not Mr. D. think of that kind of
cypress us'd often for scarves and hatbands at
funerals formerly, or for widow's vails, &c.? if so,
'twas a deep good thought.

'Ver. 26. ". . . that wear The royal [rural]
honours, and increase the year."

What's meant by increasing the year? Did the
gods or goddesses add more months, or
days, or hours to it? Or how can "arva tueri"
signify to "wear rural honours"? Is this to translate,
or abuse an
author? The next couplet are [sic]
borrow'd from Ogylby I suppose, because less to the
purpose than ordinary."

'Ver. 33. "The patron of the world, and Rome's peculiar
guard."

Idle, and none of Virgil's, no more than the sense of
the
precedent couplet; so again, he interpolates
Virgil with that

"And the round circle [circuit] of the year to guide;
Powerful of blessings, which thou strew'st around."

A ridiculous Latinism, and an impertinent
addition; indeed the whole period is but one piece
of
absurdity and nonsense, as those who lay it
with the original must find.

'Ver. 42, 43. "And Neptune shall resign the fasces of the
sea."

Was he consul or dictator there?

"And watry virgins for thy bed shall strive."

Both absurd interpolations.

'Ver. 47, 48. "Where in the void of heaven a place is
free.Ah, happy D—n, were that place for
thee!"

But where is that void? Or what does our
translator mean by it? He knows what Ovid says
God did, to prevent such a void in heaven;
perhaps, this was then forgotten: but Virgil talks more
sensibly.

'Ver. 49. "The scorpion ready to receive thy laws."

No, he would not then have gotten out of his way so
fast.

'Ver. 56. "The [Though] Proserpine affects her silent
seat."

What made her then so angry with Ascalaphus,
for preventing her return? She was now mus'd to Patience
under the determinations of Fate, rather than
fond of her residence.

[308] Such were the strictures of
Milbourne, who found few abettors; and of whom it may be
reasonably imagined that many who favoured his design were
ashamed of his insolence.

[309] When admiration had subsided
the translation was more coolly examined, and found like all
others to be sometimes erroneous and sometimes licentious. Those
who could find faults thought they could avoid them; and Dr.
Brady attempted in blank verse a translation of the
Eneid, which, when dragged into the world, did not
live long enough to cry. I have never seen it; but that such a
version there is, or has been, perhaps some old catalogue
informed me.

[310] With not much better success
Trapp, when his Tragedy and his Prelections
had given him reputation, attempted another blank version of the
Eneid; to which, notwithstanding the slight regard
with which it was treated, he had afterwards perseverance enough
to add the Eclogues and Georgicks. His
book may continue its existence as long as it is the clandestine
refuge of schoolboys.

[311] Since the English ear has been
accustomed to the mellifluence of Pope's numbers, and the diction
of poetry has become more splendid, new attempts have been made
to translate Virgil; and all his works have been attempted by men
better qualified to contend with Dryden. I will not engage myself
in an invidious comparison by opposing one passage to another: a
work of which there would be no end, and which might be often
offensive without use.

[312] It is not by comparing line
with line that the merit of great works is to be estimated, but
by their general effects and ultimate result. It is easy to note
a weak line, and write one more vigorous in its place; to find a
happiness of expression in the original, and transplant it by
force into the version: but what is given to the parts may be
subducted from the whole, and the reader may be weary though the
critick may commend. Works of imagination excel by their
allurement and delight; by their power of attracting and
detaining the attention. That book is good in vain which the
reader throws away. He only is the master who keeps the mind in
pleasing captivity; whose pages are perused with eagerness, and
in hope of new pleasure are perused again; and whose conclusion
is perceived with an eye of sorrow, such as the traveller casts
upon departing day.

[313] By his proportion of this
predomination I will consent that Dryden should be tried: of
this, which, in opposition to reason, makes Ariosto the darling
and the pride of Italy; of this, which, in defiance of criticism,
continues Shakespeare the sovereign of the drama.

[314] His last work was his
Fables, in which he gave us the first example of a
mode of writing which the Italians call refacimento, a
renovation of ancient writers, by modernizing their language.
Thus the old poem of Boiardo has been new-dressed by Domenichi
and Berni. The works of Chaucer, upon which this kind of
rejuvenescence has been bestowed by Dryden, require little
criticism. The tale of The Cock seems hardly worth
revival; and the story of Palamon and Arcite,
containing an action unsuitable to the times in which it is
placed, can hardly be suffered to pass without censure of the
hyperbolical commendation which Dryden has given it in the
general Preface, and in a poetical Dedication, a piece where his
original fondness of remote conceits seems to have revived.

[315] Of the three pieces borrowed
from Boccace Sigismunda may be defended by the
celebrity of the story. Theodore and Honoria, though
it contains not much moral, yet afforded opportunities of
striking description. And Cymon was formerly a tale
of such reputation that, at the revival of letters, it was
translated into Latin by one of the Beroalds.

[316] Whatever subjects employed his
pen he was still improving our measures and embellishing our
language.

[317] In this volume are interspersed
some short original poems, which, with his prologues, epilogues,
and songs, may be comprised in Congreve's remark, that even
those, if he had written nothing else, would have entitled him to
the praise of excellence in his kind.

[318] One composition must however be
distinguished. The ode for St. Cecilia's Day,
perhaps the last effort of his poetry, has been always considered
as exhibiting the highest flight of fancy and the exactest nicety
of art. This is allowed to stand without a rival. If indeed there
is any excellence beyond it in some other of Dryden's works that
excellence must be found. Compared with the Ode on
Killigrew it may be pronounced perhaps superior in the
whole; but without any single part equal to the first stanza of
the other.

[319] It is said to have cost Dryden
a fortnight's labour; but it does not want its negligences: some
of the lines are without correspondent rhymes: a defect, which I
never detected but after an acquaintance of many years, and which
the enthusiasm of the writer might hinder him from
perceiving.

[320] His last stanza has less
emotion than the former; but is not less elegant in the diction.
The conclusion is vicious; the musick of Timotheus, which 'raised
a mortal to the skies,' had only a metaphorical power; that of
Cecilia, which 'drew an angel down,' had a real effect; the crown
therefore could not reasonably be divided.

[321] IN a general survey of Dryden's
labours he appears to have had a mind very comprehensive by
nature, and much enriched with acquired knowledge. His
compositions are the effects of a vigorous genius operating upon
large materials.

[322] The power that predominated in
his intellectual operations was rather strong reason than quick
sensibility. Upon all occasions that were presented he studied
rather than felt, and produced sentiments not such as Nature
enforces, but meditation supplies. With the simple and elemental
passions, as they spring separate in the mind, he seems not much
acquainted, and seldom describes them but as they are complicated
by the various relations of society and confused in the tumults
and agitations of life.

[323] What he says of love may
contribute to the explanation of his character:

'Love various minds does variously inspire; It stirs in
gentle bosoms [natures] gentle fire, Like that of incense on
the altar [altars] laid; But raging flames tempestuous souls
invade, A fire which every windy passion blows; With
pride it mounts, or [and] with revenge it glows.'

[324] Dryden's was not one of the
'gentle bosoms': Love, as it subsists in itself, with no tendency
but to the person loved and wishing only for correspondent
kindness, such love as shuts out all other interest, the Love of
the Golden Age, was too soft and subtle to put his faculties in
motion. He hardly conceived it but in its turbulent effervescence
with some other desires: when it was inflamed by rivalry or
obstructed by difficulties; when it invigorated ambition or
exasperated revenge.

[325] He is therefore, with all his
variety of excellence, not often pathetick; and had so little
sensibility of the power of effusions purely natural that he did
not esteem them in others. Simplicity gave him no pleasure; and
for the first part of his life he looked on Otway with contempt,
though at last, indeed very late, he confessed that in his play
'there was Nature, which is the chief beauty.'

[326] We do not always know our own
motives. I am not certain whether it was not rather the
difficulty which he found in exhibiting the genuine operations of
the heart than a servile submission to an injudicious audience
that filled his plays with false magnificence. It was necessary
to fix attention; and the mind can be captivated only by
recollection or by curiosity; by reviving natural sentiments or
impressing new appearances of things: sentences were readier at
his call than images; he could more easily fill the ear with some
splendid novelty than awaken those ideas that slumber in the
heart.

[327] The favourite exercise of his
mind was ratiocination; and, that argument might not be too soon
at an end, he delighted to talk of liberty and necessity, destiny
and contingence; these he discusses in the language of the school
with so much profundity that the terms which he uses are not
always understood. It is indeed learning, but learning out of
place.

[328] When once he had engaged
himself in disputation, thoughts flowed in on either side: he was
now no longer at a loss; he had always objections and solutions
at command: 'verbaque provisam rem' — give him matter for
his verse, and he finds without difficulty verse for his
matter.

[329] In comedy, for which he
professes himself not naturally qualified, the mirth which he
excites will perhaps not be found so much to arise from any
original humour or peculiarity of character nicely distinguished
and diligently pursued, as from incidents and circumstances,
artifices and surprises; from jests of action rather than of
sentiment. What he had of humorous or passionate, he seems to
have had not from nature, but from other poets; if not always as
a plagiary, at least as an imitator.

[330] Next to argument, his delight
was in wild and daring sallies of sentiment, in the irregular and
excentrick violence of wit. He delighted to tread upon the brink
of meaning, where light and darkness begin to mingle; to approach
the precipice of absurdity, and hover over the abyss of unideal
vacancy. This inclination sometimes produced nonsense, which he
knew, as

'Amariel flies . . . To guard thee from the
demons of the air; My flaming sword above them to
display, All keen, and ground upon the edge of day.'

And sometimes it issued in absurdities, of which perhaps he
was not conscious:

'Then we upon our orb's last verge shall go, And see the
ocean leaning on the sky; From thence our rolling neighbours
we shall know, And on the lunar world securely pry.'

These lines have no meaning; but may we not say, in imitation
of Cowley on another book,

''Tis so like sense 'twill serve the turn as
well'?

[331] This endeavour after the grand
and the new produced many sentiments either great or bulky, and
many images either just or splendid:

'I am as free as Nature first made man, Ere the base laws
of servitude began, When wild in woods the noble savage
ran.'

''Tis but because the Living death ne'er knew, They fear
to prove it as a thing that's new: Let me th' experiment
before you try, I'll show you first how easy 'tis to
die.'

'There with a forest of their darts he strove, And stood
like Capaneus defying Jove; With his broad sword the boldest
beating down, While Fate grew pale lest he should win the
town, And turn'd the iron leaves of his [its] dark book
To make new dooms, or mend what it mistook.'

'I beg no pity for this mouldering clay; For if you give
it burial, there it takes Possession of your earth; If
burnt, and scatter'd in the air, the winds That strew my dust
diffuse my royalty, And spread me o'er your clime; for where
one atom Of mine shall light, know there Sebastian
reigns.'

Of these quotations the two first may be allowed to be great,
the two latter only tumid.

[332] Of such selection there is no
end. I will add only a few more passages; of which the first,
though it may perhaps not be quite clear in prose, is not too
obscure for poetry, as the meaning that it has is noble:

'No, there is a necessity in Fate, Why still the brave
bold man is fortunate; He keeps his object ever full in
sight, And that assurance holds him firm and right; True,
'tis a narrow way that leads to bliss, But right before there
is no precipice; Fear makes men look aside, and so [then]
their footing miss.'

[333] Of the images which the two
following citations afford the first is elegant, the second
magnificent; whether either be just, let the reader judge:

'What precious drops are these [those], Which silently
each other's track pursue, Bright as young diamonds in their
infant dew?'

'Resign your castle.' 'Enter, brave Sir; for when you
speak the word, The [These] gates shall [will] open of their
own accord; The genius of the place its Lord shall [will]
meet, And bow its towery forehead at [to] your feet.'

[334] These bursts of extravagance
Dryden calls the 'Dalilahs of the Theatre,' and owns that many
noisy lines of Maximin and Almanzor call out for vengeance upon
him; but 'I knew,' says he, 'that they were bad enough to please,
even when I wrote them.' There is surely reason to suspect that
he pleased himself as well as his audience; and that these, like
the harlots of other men, had his love, though not his
approbation.

[335] He had sometimes faults of a
less generous and splendid kind. He makes, like almost all other
poets, very frequent use of mythology, and sometimes connects
religion and fable too closely without distinction.

[336] He descends to display his
knowledge with pedantick ostentation; as when, in translating
Virgil, he says, 'tack to the larboard' — and 'veer
starboard'; and talks, in another work, of 'virtue spooming
before the wind.' His vanity now and then betrays his
ignorance:

'They [And] Nature's king through Nature's opticks view'd;
Revers'd they view'd him lessen'd to their eyes [eye].'

He had heard of reversing a telescope, and unluckily reverses
the object.

[337] He is sometimes unexpectedly
mean. When he describes the Supreme Being as moved by prayer to
stop the Fire of London, what is his expression?

A [An] hollow crystal pyramid he takes, In firmamental
waters dipp'd above, Of this [it] a broad
extinguisher he makes, And hoods the flames
that to their quarry strove.'

When he describes the Last Day, and the decisive tribunal, he
intermingles this image:

'When rattling bones together fly, From the four quarters
[corners] of the sky.'

[338] It was indeed never in his
power to resist the temptation of a jest. In his Elegy on
Cromwell:

'No sooner was the Frenchman's cause embrac'd, Than the
light Monsieur the grave Don outweigh'd;
His fortune turn'd the scale.'

[339] He had a vanity, unworthy of
his abilities, to show, as may be suspected, the rank of the
company with whom he lived, by the use of French words, which had
then crept into conversation; such as fraicheur for
coolness, fougue for turbulence, and a few
more, none of which the language has incorporated or retained.
They continue only where they stood first, perpetual warnings to
future innovators.

[340] These are his faults of
affectation; his faults of negligence are beyond recital. Such is
the unevenness of his compositions that ten lines are seldom
found together without something of which the reader is ashamed.
Dryden was no rigid judge of his own pages; he seldom struggled
after supreme excellence, but snatched in haste what was within
his reach; and when he could content others, was himself
contented. He did not keep present to his mind an idea of pure
perfection; nor compare his works, such as they were, with what
they might be made. He knew to whom he should be opposed. He had
more musick than Waller, more vigour than Denham, and more nature
than Cowley; and from his contemporaries he was in no danger.
Standing therefore in the highest place he had no care to rise by
contending with himself; but while there was no name above his
own was willing to enjoy fame on the easiest terms.

[341] He was no lover of labour. What
he thought sufficient he did not stop to make better, and allowed
himself to leave many parts unfinished, in confidence that the
good lines would overbalance the bad. What he had once written he
dismissed from his thoughts; and, I believe, there is no example
to be found of any correction or improvement made by him after
publication. The hastiness of his productions might be the effect
of necessity; but his subsequent neglect could hardly have any
other cause than impatience of study.

[342] What can be said of his
versification will be little more than a dilatation of the praise
given it by Pope:

'Waller was smooth; but Dryden taught to join The varying
verse, the full-resounding line, The long majestick march,
and energy divine???

[343] Some improvements had been
already made in English numbers, but the full force of our
language was not yet felt: the verse that was smooth was commonly
feeble.' If Cowley had sometimes a finished line he had it by
chance. Dryden knew how to chuse the flowing and the sonorous
words; to vary the pauses and adjust the accents; to diversify
the cadence, and yet preserve the smoothness of his metre.

[344] Of triplets and alexandrines,
though he did not introduce the use, he established it. The
triplet has long subsisted among us. Dryden seems not to have
traced it higher than to Chapman's Homer; but it is to
be found in Phaer's Virgil, written in the reign of
Mary, and in Hall's Satires, published five years
before the death of Elizabeth.

[345] The alexandrine was, I believe,
first used by Spenser, for the sake of closing his stanza with a
fuller sound. We had a longer measure of fourteen syllables, into
which the Eneid was translated by Phaer, and other
works of the ancients by other writers; of which Chapman's
Iliad was, I believe, the last.

[346] The two first lines of Phaer's
third Eneid will exemplify this measure:

'When Asia's [Asia] state was overthrown, and Priam's kingdom
stout, All guiltless, by the power of gods above was rooted
out.'

[347] As these lines had their break
or caesura always at the eighth syllable it was thought
in time commodious to divide them; and quatrains of lines
alternately consisting of eight and six syllables make the most
soft and pleasing of our lyrick measures, as

'Relentless Time, destroying power, Which [Whom] stone and
brass obey, Who giv'st to every flying hour To work some
new decay.'

[348] In the alexandrine, when its
power was once felt, some poems, as Drayton's
Polyolbion, were wholly written; and sometimes the
measures of twelve and fourteen syllables were interchanged with
one another. Cowley was the first that inserted the alexandrine
at pleasure among the heroick lines of ten syllables, and from
him Dryden professes to have adopted it.

[349] The triplet and alexandrine are
not universally approved. Swift always censured them, and wrote
some lines to ridicule them. In examining their propriety it is
to be considered that the essence of verse is regularity, and its
ornament is variety. To write verse is to dispose syllables and
sounds harmonically by some known and settled rule — a rule
however lax enough to substitute similitude for identity, to
admit change without breach of order, and to relieve the ear
without disappointing it. Thus a Latin hexameter combined; the
English heroick admits of acute or grave syllables variously
disposed. The Latin never deviates into seven feet, or exceeds
the number of seventeen syllables; but the English alexandrine
breaks the lawful bounds, and surprises the reader with two
syllables more than he expected.

[350] The effect of the triplet is
the same: the ear has been accustomed to expect a new rhyme in
every couplet; but is on a sudden surprised with three rhymes
together, to which the reader could not accommodate his voice did
he not obtain notice of the change from the braces of the
margins. Surely there is something unskilful in the necessity of
such mechanical direction.

[351] Considering the metrical art
simply as a science, and consequently excluding all casualty, we
must allow that triplets and alexandrines inserted by caprice are
interruptions of that constancy to which science aspires. And
though the variety which they produce may very justly be desired,
yet to make our poetry exact there ought to be some stated mode
of admitting them.

[352] But till some such regulation
can be formed, I wish them still to be retained in their present
state. They are sometimes grateful to the reader, and sometimes
convenient to the poet. Fenton was of opinion that Dryden was too
liberal and Pope too sparing in their use.

[353] The rhymes of Dryden are
commonly just, and he valued himself for his readiness in finding
them; but he is sometimes open to objection.

[354] It is the common practice of
our poets to end the second line with a weak or grave
syllable:

'Laugh [Laughed] all the powers that [who] favour
tyranny, And all the standing army of the sky.'

Sometimes he concludes a period or paragraph with the first
line of a couplet, which, though the French seem to do it without
irregularity, always displeases in English poetry.

[355] The alexandrine, though much
his favourite, is not always very diligently fabricated by him.
It invariably requires a break at the sixth syllable; a rule
which the modern French poets never violate, but which Dryden
sometimes neglected:

'And with paternal thunder vindicates his throne.'

[356] Of Dryden's works it was said
by Pope that 'he could select from them better specimens of every
mode of poetry than any other English writer could supply.'
Perhaps no nation ever produced a writer that enriched his
language with such variety of models. To him we owe the
improvement, perhaps the completion of our metre, the refinement
of our language, and much of the correctness of our sentiments.
By him we were taught 'sapere et fari,' to think naturally and
express forcibly. Though Davies has reasoned in rhyme before him,
it may be perhaps maintained that he was the first who joined
argument with poetry. He shewed us the true bounds of a
translator's liberty. What was said of Rome, adorned by Augustus,
may be applied by an easy metaphor to English poetry embellished
by Dryden, 'lateritiam invenit, marmoream reliquit,' he found it
brick, and he left it marble.

[357]The
invocation before the Georgicks is here inserted
from Mr. Milbourne's version, that, according to his own
proposal, his verses may be compared with those which he
censures.

'What makes the richest tilth, beneath what signs
To plough, and when to match your elms and
vines; What care with flocks and what with
herds agrees, And all the management of frugal
bees, I sing, Maecenas! Ye immensely
clear, Vast orbs of light which guide the rolling year;Bacchus and mother Ceres, if by you, We
fat'ning corn for hungry mast pursue, If,
taught by you, we first the cluster prest, And
thin cold streams with spritely juice
refresht. Ye fawns the present numens of
the field,Wood nymphs and fawns, your kind
assistance yield, Your gifts I sing! and thou, at whose
fear'd stroke From rending earth the fiery courser
broke, Great Neptune, O assist my artful song!
And thou to whom the woods and groves belong, Whose snowy
heifers on her flow'ry plains In mighty herds the Caean
Isle maintains!Pan, happy shepherd, if thy
cares divine E'er to improve thy Maenalus
incline, Leave thy Lycaean wood and native
grove, And with thy lucky smiles our work approve!
Be Pallas too, sweet oil's inventor, kind; And he,
who first the crooked plough design'd!Sylvanus, god of all the woods appear, Whose hands a
new-drawn tender cypress bear! Ye gods and
goddesses who e'er with love Would guard our
pastures, and our fields improve! You, who new plants from
unsown lands supply; And with condensing clouds obscure the
sky, And drop 'em softly thence in fruitful showers,
Assist my enterprize, ye gentler powers!

And thou, great Caesar! though we know not yet
Among what gods thou'lt fix thy lofty seat, Whether thou'lt
be the kind tutelar god Of thy own Rome; or
with thy awful nod, Guide the vast world, while thy great
hand shall bear The fruits and seasons of the turning
year, And thy bright brows thy mother's myrtles wear:
Whether thou'lt all the boundless ocean sway, And sea-men
only to thyself shall pray,Thule, the farthest
island, kneel to thee, And, that thou may'st her son by
marriage be,Tethys will for the happy purchase
yield To make a dowry of her watry field;
Whether thou'lt add to heaven a brighter sign, And
o'er the summer months serenely shine; Where between
Cancer and Erigone, There yet remains a
spacious room for thee. Where the hot
Scorpion too his arms declines, And more to thee
than half his arch resigns; Whate'er thou'lt be; for
sure the realms below No just pretence to thy command can
show: No such ambition sways thy vast desires, Though
Greece her own Elysian fields admires. And
now, at last, contented Proserpine Can all her
mother's earnest prayers decline. Whate'er thou'lt be, O
guide our gentle course, And with thy smiles our bold
attempts enforce; With me th' unknowing rustics'
wants relieve, And, though on earth, our sacred vows
receive!'

[358]Mr.
Dryden, having received from Rymer his Remarks on
the Tragedies of the last Age, wrote observations on the
blank leaves, which, having been in the possession of Mr.
Garrick, are by his favour communicated to the publick that no
particle of Dryden may be lost:

[359] 'That we may the less wonder
why pity and terror are not now the only springs on which our
tragedies move, and that Shakespeare may be more excused, Rapin
confesses that the French tragedies now all run on the
tendre; and gives the reason, because love is the
passion which most predominates in our souls, and that therefore
the passions represented become insipid, unless they are
conformable to the thoughts of the audience. But it is to be
concluded that this passion works not now amongst the French so
strongly as the other two did amongst the ancients. Amongst us,
who have a stronger genius for writing, the operations from the
writing are much stronger: for the raising of Shakespeare's
passions is more from the excellency of the words and thoughts,
than the justness of the occasion; and if he has been able to
pick single occasions he has never founded the whole reasonably,
yet, by the genius of poetry in writing, he has succeeded.

[360] 'Rapin attributes more to the
dictio, that is, to the words and discourse of a
tragedy, than Aristotle has done, who places them in the last
rank of beauties, perhaps, only last in order, because they are
the last product of the design, of the disposition or connection
of its parts; of the characters, of the manners of those
characters, and of the thoughts proceeding from those manners.
Rapin's words are remarkable: 'Tis not the admirable intrigue the
surprising events, and extraordinary incidents that make the
beauty of a tragedy; 'tis the discourses, when they are natural
and passionate: so are Shakespeare's.

[361] 'The parts of a poem, tragick
or heroick, are

'1. The fable itself.

'2. The order or manner of ???

'3. The manners or decency of the characters, in speaking or
acting what is proper for them, and proper to be shewn by the
poet.

'4. The thoughts which express the manners.

'5. The words which express those thoughts.

[362] 'In the last of these Homer
excels Virgil, Virgil all other ancient poets, and Shakespeare
all modern poets.

[363] 'For the second of these, the
order: the meaning is, that a fable ought to have a beginning,
middle, and an end, all just and natural, so that that part,
e.g. which is the middle, could not naturally be the
beginning or end, and so of the rest: all depend on one another,
like the links of a curious chain. If terror and pity are only to
be raised, certainly this author follows Aristotle's rules, and
Sophocles' and Euripides's example; but joy may be raised too,
and that doubly, either by seeing a wicked man punished, or a
good man at last fortunate; or perhaps indignation, to see
wickedness prosperous and goodness depressed: both these may be
profitable to the end of tragedy, reformation of manners; but the
last improperly, only as it begets pity in the audience: though
Aristotle, I confess, places tragedies of this kind in the second
form.

[364] 'He who undertakes to answer
this excellent critique of Mr. Rymer, in behalf of our English
poets against the Greek, ought to do it in this manner. Either by
yielding to him the greatest part of what he contends for, which
consists in this, that the m?w?û?d?ú???, i.e.
the design and conduct of it, is more conducing in the Greeks to
those ends of tragedy which Aristotle and he propose, namely, to
cause terror and pity; yet the granting this does not set the
Greeks above the English poets.

[365] 'But the answerer ought to
prove two things: first, that the fable is not the greatest
master-piece of a tragedy, though it be the foundation of it.
'Secondly, That other ends as suitable to the nature of
tragedy may be found in the English, which were not in the
Greek.

[366] 'Aristotle places the fable
first; not "quoad dignitatem, sed quoad fundamentum": for a
fable, never so movingly contrived to those ends of his, pity and
terror, will operate nothing on our affections, except the
characters, manners, thoughts, and words are suitable.

[367] 'So that it remains to Mr.
Rymer to prove that in all those, or the greatest part of them,
we are inferior to Sophocles and Euripides; and this he has
offered at in some measure, but, I think, a little partially to
the ancients.

[368] 'For the fable itself: 'tis in
the English more adorned with episodes, and larger than in the
Greek poets; consequently more diverting. For, if the action be
but one, and that plain, without any counter-turn of design or
episode, i.e. under-plot, how can it be so pleasing as
the English, which have both under-plot and a turned design,
which keeps the audience in expectation of the catastrophe?
whereas in the Greek poets we see through the whole design at
first.

[369] 'For the characters, they are
neither so many nor so various in Sophocles and Euripides as in
Shakespeare and Fletcher; only they are more adapted to those
ends of tragedy which Aristotle commends to us, pity and
terror.

[370] 'The manners flow from the
characters, and consequently must partake of their advantages and
disadvantages.

[371] 'The thoughts and words, which
are the fourth and fifth beauties of tragedy, are certainly more
noble and more poetical in the English than in the Greek, which
must be proved by comparing them, somewhat more equitably than
Mr. Rymer has done.

[372] 'After all, we need not yield
that the English way is less conducing to move pity and terror,
because they often shew virtue oppressed and vice punished: where
they do not both, or either, they are not to be defended.

[373] 'And if we should grant that
the Greeks performed this better, perhaps it may admit of dispute
whether pity and terror are either the prime, or at least the
only ends of tragedy.

[374] ''Tis not enough that Aristotle
has said so, for Aristotle drew his models of tragedy from
Sophocles and Euripides; and, if he had seen ours, might have
changed his mind. And chiefly we have to say (what I hinted on
pity and terror, in the last paragraph save one) that the
punishment of vice and reward of virtue are the most adequate
ends of tragedy, because most conducing to good example of life.
Now pity is not so easily raised for a criminal, and the ancient
tragedy always represents its chief person such, as it is for an
innocent man; and the suffering of innocence and punishment of
the offender is of the nature of English tragedy: contrarily, in
the Greek, innocence is unhappy often, and the offender escapes.
Then we are not touched with the sufferings of any sort of men so
much as of lovers; and this was almost unknown to the ancients:
so that they neither administered poetical justice, of which Mr.
Rymer boasts, so well as we; neither knew they the best
common-place of pity, which is love.

[375] 'He therefore unjustly blames
us for not building on what the ancients left us; for it seems,
upon consideration of the premises, that we have wholly finished
what they began.

[376] 'My judgement on this piece is
this, that it is extremely learned; but that the author of it is
better read in the Greek than in the English poets; that all
writers ought to study this critique, as the best account I have
ever seen of the ancients; that the model of tragedy he has here
given is excellent and extreme correct; but that it is not the
only model of all tragedy, because it is too much circumscribed
in plot, characters, &c.; and lastly, that we may be taught
here justly to admire and imitate the ancients, without giving
them the preference with this author in prejudice to our own
country.

[377] 'Want of method in this
excellent treatise makes the thoughts of the author sometimes
obscure.

[378] 'His meaning, that pity and
terror are to be moved, is, that they are to be moved as the
means conducing to the ends of tragedy, which are pleasure and
instruction.

[379] 'And these two ends may be thus
distinguished. The chief end of the poet is to please; for his
immediate reputation depends on it.

[380] 'The great end of the poem is
to instruct, which is performed by making pleasure the vehicle of
that instruction; for poesy is an art, and all arts are made to
profit. Rapin.

[381] 'The pity, which the poet is to
labour for, is for the criminal, not for those or him whom he has
murdered, or who have been the occasion of the tragedy. The
terror is likewise in the punishment of the same criminal; who,
if he be represented too great an offender, will not be pitied;
if altogether innocent, his punishment will be unjust.

[382] 'Another obscurity is, where he
says Sophocles perfected tragedy by introducing the third actor;
that is, he meant, three kinds of action: one company singing, or
another playing on the musick; a third dancing.

[383] 'To make a true judgement in
this competition betwixt the Greek poets and the English, in
tragedy: 'Consider, first, how Aristotle has defined a
tragedy. Secondly, what he assigns the end of it to be. Thirdly,
what he thinks the beauties of it. Fourthly, the means to attain
the end proposed.

[384] 'Compare the Greek and English
tragick poets justly and without partiality, according to those
rules.

[385] 'Then secondly, consider
whether Aristotle has made a just definition of tragedy; of its
parts, of its ends, and of its beauties; and whether he, having
not seen any others but those of Sophocles, Euripides, &c.,
had or truly could determine what all the excellences of tragedy
are, and wherein they consist.

[386] 'Next shew in what ancient
tragedy was deficient: for example, in the narrowness of its
plots, and fewness of persons, and try whether that be not a
fault in the Greek poets; and whether their excellency was so
great when the variety was visibly so little; or whether what
they did was not very easy to do.

[387] 'Then make a judgement on what
the English have added to their beauties: as, for example, not
only more plot, but also new passions; as, namely, that of love,
scarce touched on by the ancients, except in this one example of
Phaedra, cited by Mr. Rymer; and in that how short they were of
Fletcher!

[388] 'Prove also that love, being an
heroick passion, is fit for tragedy, which cannot be denied,
because of the example alledged of Phaedra; and how far
Shakespeare has outdone them in friendship, &c.

[389] 'To return to the beginning of
this enquiry; consider if pity and terror be enough for tragedy
to move: and I believe, upon a true definition of tragedy, it
will be found that its work extends farther, and that it is to
reform manners, by a delightful representation of human life in
great persons, by way of dialogue. If this be true, then not only
pity and terror are to be moved as the only means to bring us to
virtue, but generally love to virtue and hatred to vice; by
shewing the rewards of one, and punishments of the other; at
least, by rendering virtue always amiable, tho' it be shewn
unfortunate; and vice detestable, though it be shewn
triumphant.

[390] 'If, then, the encouragement of
virtue and discouragement of vice be the proper ends of poetry in
tragedy, pity and terror, though good means, are not the only.
For all the passions, in their turns, are to be set in a ferment:
as joy, anger, love, fear are to be used as the poet's
common-places; and a general concernment for the principal actors
is to be raised, by making them appear such in their characters,
their words, and actions, as will interest the audience in their
fortunes.

[391] 'And if, after all, in a larger
sense pity comprehends this concernment for the good, and terror
includes detestation for the bad, then let us consider whether
the English have not answered this end of tragedy as well as the
ancients, or perhaps better.

[392] 'And here Mr. Rymer's
objections against these plays are to be impartially weighed,
that we may see whether they are of weight enough to turn the
balance against our countrymen.

[393] ''Tis evident those plays which
he arraigns have moved both those passions in a high degree upon
the stage.'

[394] 'To give the glory of this away
from the poet, and to place it upon the actors, seems unjust.

[395] 'One reason is, because
whatever actors they have found, the event has been the same,
that is, the same passions have been always moved; which shews
that there is something of force and merit in the plays
themselves, conducing to the design of raising these two
passions: and suppose them ever to have been excellently acted,
yet action only adds grace, vigour, and more life upon the stage;
but cannot give it wholly where it is not first. But secondly, I
dare appeal to those who have never seen them acted, if they have
not found these two passions moved within them: and if the
general voice will carry it Mr. Rymer's prejudice will take off
his single testimony.

[396] 'This, being matter of fact, is
reasonably to be established by this appeal; as if one man says
'tis night, the rest of the world conclude it to be day; there
needs no farther argument against him that it is so.

[397] 'If he urge that the general
taste is depraved his arguments to prove this can at best but
evince that our poets took not the best way to raise those
passions; but experience proves against him, that these means,
which they have used, have been successful, and have produced
them.

[398] 'And one reason of that success
is, in my opinion, this, that Shakespeare and Fletcher have
written to the genius of the age and nation in which they lived;
for though nature, as he objects, is the same in all places, and
reason too the same, yet the climate, the age, the disposition of
the people, to whom a poet writes, may be so different that what
pleased the Greeks would not satisfy an English audience.

[399] 'And if they proceeded upon a
foundation of truer reason to please the Athenians than
Shakespeare and Fletcher to please the English, it only shews
that the Athenians were a more judicious people; but the poet's
business is certainly to please the audience.

[400] 'Whether our English audience
have been pleased hitherto with acorns, as he calls it, or with
bread, is the next question; that is, whether the means which
Shakespeare and Fletcher have used in their plays to raise those
passions before named, be better applied to the ends by the Greek
poets than by them. And perhaps we shall not grant him this
wholly: let it be granted that a writer is not to run down with
the stream, or to please the people by their own usual methods,
but rather to reform their judgements, it still remains to prove
that our theatre needs this total reformation.

[401] 'The faults, which he has found
in their designs, are rather wittily aggravated in many places
than reasonably urged; and as much may be returned on the Greeks,
by one who were as witty as himself.

[402] 'They destroy not, if they are
granted, the foundation of the fabrick; only take away from the
beauty of the symmetry: for example, the faults in the character
of the King and No-King are not as he makes them,
such as render him detestable, but only imperfections which
accompany human nature, and are for the most part excused by the
violence of his love; so that they destroy not our pity or
concernment for him: this answer may be applied to most of his
objections of that kind.

[403] 'And Rollo committing many
murders, when he is answerable but for one, is too severely
arraigned by him; for it adds to our horror and detestation of
the criminal: and poetick justice is not neglected neither; for
we stab him in our minds for every offence which he commits; and
the point, which the poet is to gain on the audience, is not so
much in the death of an offender as the raising an horror of his
crimes.

[404] 'That the criminal should
neither be wholly guilty nor wholly innocent, but so
participating of both as to move both pity and terror, is
certainly a good rule, but not perpetually to be observed; for
that were to make all tragedies too much alike, which objection
he foresaw, but has not fully answered.

[405] 'To conclude, therefore; if the
plays of the ancients are more correctly plotted, ours are more
beautifully written. And if we can raise passions as high on
worse foundations it shews our genius in tragedy is greater; for,
in all other parts of it, the English have manifestly excelled
them.'

[406]The
original of the following letter is preserved in the Library at
Lambeth, and was kindly imparted to the publick by the reverend
Dr. Vyse.

Copy of an original Letter from John Dryden, Esq., to his sons
in Italy, from a MS. in the Lambeth Library, marked No. 933. p.
56. (Superscribed)

'Al Illustrissimo Sigre
Carlo Dryden Camariere d' Honore A. S. S.

In Roma. 'Franca per Mantoua. 'Sept. the 3d, our style
[1697].

'Dear Sons,

'Being now at Sir William Bowyer's in the country I cannot
write at large, because I find myself somewhat indisposed with a
cold, and am thick of hearing, rather worse than I was in town. I
am glad to find, by your letter of July 26th, your style, that
you are both in health; but wonder you should think me so
negligent as to forget to give you an account of the ship in
which your parcel is to come. I have written to you two or three
letters concerning it, which I have sent by safe hands, as I told
you, and doubt not but you have them before this can arrive to
you. Being out of town, I have forgotten the ship's name, which
your mother will enquire, and put it into her letter, which is
joined with mine. But the master's name I remember: he is called
Mr. Ralph Thorp; the ship is bound to Leghorn, consigned to Mr.
Peter and Mr. Tho. Ball, merchants. I am of your opinion, that by
Tonson's means almost all our letters have miscarried for this
last year. But, however, he has missed of his design in the
Dedication, though he had prepared the book for it; for in every
figure of Eneas he has caused him to be drawn like King William,
with a hooked nose. After my return to town I intend to alter a
play of Sir Robert Howard's, written long since, and lately put
by him into my hands: 'tis called The Conquest of China by
the Tartars. It will cost me six weeks' study, with the
probable benefit of an hundred pounds. In the mean time I am
writing a song for St. Cecilia's Feast, who, you know, is the
patroness of musick. This is troublesome, and no way beneficial;
but I could not deny the Stewards of the Feast, who came in a
body to me to desire that kindness, one of them being Mr.
Bridgman, whose parents are your mother's friends. I hope to send
you thirty guineas between Michaelmas and Christmas, of which I
will give you an account when I come to town. I remember the
counsel you give me in your letter; but dissembling, though
lawful in some cases, is not my talent; yet, for your sake, I
will struggle with the plain openness of my nature, and keep in
my just resentments against that degenerate order. In the mean
time, I flatter not myself with any manner of hopes, but do my
duty, and suffer for God's sake; being assured, beforehand, never
to be rewarded, though the times should alter. Towards the latter
end of this month, September, Charles will begin to recover his
perfect health, according to his nativity, which, casting it
myself, I am sure is true, and all things hitherto have happened
accordingly to the very time that I predicted them; I hope at the
same time to recover more health, according to my age. Remember
me to poor Harry, whose prayers I earnestly desire. My
Virgil succeeds in the world beyond its desert or my
expectation. You know the profits might have been more; but
neither my conscience nor my honour would suffer me to take them:
but I never can repent of my constancy, since I am thoroughly
persuaded of the justice of the cause for which I suffer. It has
pleased God to raise up many friends to me amongst my enemies,
though they who ought to have been my friends are negligent of
me. I am called to dinner, and cannot go on with this letter,
which I desire you to excuse; and am